I look at it as still the wildwest, anyone can flag or upvote. the person who is flagged or upvoted can also post an endless stream of complaints etc since its within their power to do it. Not my personal choice but still its within their power.
What I find interesting is people who will say hey its their steempower let them vote how they want, but then they dislike when someone decides to sell their vote power or upvoting only their own content etc. I find it fascinating to watch where people draw lines, often arbitrarily to their sense of "fair".
I agree with much of your post. I am also the type who knows my posts wouldn't be missed if I left. I often see people who talk about the amount of hours they spent making a post like that matters. I don't think my drawings are "worth" big upvotes simply because I often spend many hours on them.
I disagree a little about blogs being of "value". I think some of them may have value depending on content and readers interest. I am more than happy to upvote blogs I like to read because I think its a great use case for awarding steem.
Steemit is a game to me, a cool game where you can make money, but a game none the less.
well I never got to settle on that viewpoint, blogs for me are meaningful and sure steem as a technology is what drives the value for the most part, but the community is what is driving it in the first place, so good posts and good authors make this place better, it's way easier to have quality in one place then to search it around everywhere... content and quality is what made most of the better platforms stand out. It's not different here, I can't agree to the game aspect and I dislike playing with people's perceptions of a fair game.
on the upvote/downvote dichotomy I've commented a few times already, so I agree with everything for the most part,
what you have noted on time does bug me however, should I be rewarded for my approximately 30 minutes on this post, reading it, commenting, reading it's comments for valuable content, I bet I should, I bet I've brought value to the conversation, if not I've seen what value it has to offer based on my standards, that is rewarding as it is to me, but in comparison, if somebody makes scammy spammy posts and comments is a douche for the most part, gets a bigger reward because he games the platform better and gets the favorable odds stacked precisely, then you bet I want his money or at least a part of it, views and controversy don't make a good conversation in my eyes, well sometimes they do, but for the most part it's empty barter coined noise in the general sense.
I'd rather speak with thinking and reading people, then the two button one thumb slider population.