Thanks for describing the scenario so concisely - I think you are seeing it for what it is.
I've seen some beautifully motivated Steemit promoting souls, both amongst the technically able crowd, witnesses included, and amongst the socially sensible authors just publishing here for the sake of sharing their thoughts. It is a pity the gaps for exploiting the system apparently have to exist in order for the system to work, allowing selfishly motivated heavy-weights to gain too much ground, messing entry level motivation up. This seems to leave the Steemit economy in much the same condition as the real world economy it was supposed to help counter.