[answering your question from below]
Yes, I believe some of the forks have damaged Steems reputation for stability and investors being able to make an informed buy-in decision. For example, early vesting decisions were made on the basis of 50% of the reward fund going to curation rewards, which accrue to VEST/SP holders as a class. That this was slashed by 50% and the difference shifted to bloggers, directly hurt the interests of investors, and raises red flags for me as an investor to be wary of risking (term locked) capital here. This was a very serious reputational negative from the perspective of those considering an investment (apart from whether this turned out to be good for the blogging platform as intended-- I don't think it did)
Numerically by far most of the many (14?) forks have been code fixes (which nobody opposes) and not design or economic changes. Most of the rest have been minor changes, so the damage is so far limited, but that is not a reason to make it worse.
Also, I'm told that the price of VESTS (which is the "investor" token in the platform) is not lower than pre-launch nor even lower than pre- July pump. STEEM is an entry/exit token not intended to be held long term so comparing its value over a period of months is meaningless. I have not checked the numbers on this claim myself, so if it is incorrect I apologize in advance for the misinformation.
Cost per VESTs is still higher but the supply of steem have more than doubled since then so the cost per vest should actually be a lot more higher.
If the supply didn't move and the cost per VESTs was higher then you could say a share in the platform is more expensive but with 100% inflation the price should have been at least twice higher but its only 0.20$ more expensive.
Steem's value is always meaningfull because it represents the rewards on the platform, the lower the price the less interests and investments you will get.