Steem has become oligarchic in a few ways. The old miners (a club of which I am a member, albeit a junior one; I bought a lot of my stake later on) absolutely got an advantage that the system will take decades to correct for. That's unfortunate.
The reputation score system (which I understand was copied wholesale from reddit) is clearly designed to create and protect oligarchies. Some winners/manipulators get high reps early on, and are then protected from ever being brought down, but they are simultaneously the gatekeepers to anyone else increasing their rep.
And of course, the system just got hardforked to allow sybil attacks and vote farming, if I'm not mistaken... Both of which the original protocol was carefully designed to prevent. I'm not saying we should go back, I don't know, but I'm worried we've just cut the economy's femoral artery.
Unfortunately, I suspect that this hard fork will greatly benefit troll farming manipulators and abusers like berbie, as they are the ones who were already sybil attacking the platform and manipulating the rewards/reputation systems to create confusion and swindle the community into taking this platform down a darker path.
We may be able to come back from this, but I'm not certain how. I haven't been watching that closely, to be honest (so take this comment with that grain of salt). In the meantime, I still love the content and creators this system has attracted. But can it last?...
I suggest you backup your words "they are the ones who were already sybil attacking the platform and manipulating the rewards/reputation systems to create confusion and swindle the community into taking this platform down a darker path".