I fully agree with you. Money makes it different than other platforms and I quite like the difference. However, it also incentivizes many users to use different tricks and strategies and generates quite a lot of spam. Let's focus on good content and meaningful discussion and see what happens.
You may also want to check this post about war on spam from @stellabelle - https://steemit.com/waronspam/@stellabelle/00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001-sbd.