I agree with you that Steemit and therefore also Steem is standing on very thin ice. Currently, I wouldn't recommend to invest in Steem (or any other crypto for that matter), because it's ran by people who either don't understand or don't care for the implications of the site which especially counts for the monetary aspect. The developers and witnesses may be good programmers, but they are really lousy economists. But if you want to run such a blockchain and call it (and be a competitive) currency,then you have to act like a currency. Right now, we are incredibly far away from that and the ignorance towards this huge issue of the reward distribution is more than just telling about the interests and ambitions of the the platforms relevant players on.
What I find even more hazardous than the reward distribution is the big upvote bots. There are maybe 10 relevant ones and they are ran by a few whales who make thousands of $ every day. I looked it up for buildawhale and he made 1200 SBD on Monday a week ago. That is imo much more immoral because it massively drains the platform, distorts the prices, creates an all-mighty oligarchy and in exchange, the owners of the bot owners do virtually nothing to better the platform. All they do is suck in the minnow $$. (and in exchange, the upvote bottom line is near zero, but the fewest realize that because of the huge sums involved. This needs to become public.
I'm considering to create a witness control account that is supposed to collevt votes for witnesses and puts the witnesses under scrutiny to force some sort of a quality selection. This process (of professionalization) is already going, but it's far to slow. I'd say about 80% of the witnesses are nothing but incompetent or scammers. That needs to change soon - or there will be no future for Steem/Steemit.
I will follow you now.