It's the combination of your first and second point that are the problem for Steemit. When people decide to "pay to play" there's a certain level of service they expect with that. Meanwhile, STINC practically has everyone back at DOS.
There is a staggering learning curve to succeed on here even if you do buy STEEM, unless all you do is upvote yourself. And if you do that, expect to get downvoted and ridiculed by the longterm big money players, who believe in the "purity" of voting mostly for others.
Of course, they do it in a great big circle jerk between other big accounts like theirs, but they still stand in judgment and even penalize the self-voter who simply made a big investment and doesn't know how else to profit from it.