Your article has some common threads of thought that I have had. It seems like Steemit can support creative values, but maybe, it needs some mechanism to cultivate this culture that Ned Scott envisions.
Rather unfortunately, the platform is seems to support the culture of v4v, pay4v, etc. Dare I say it? The trending & hot feeds seems to be pay to play list. It's joke when you see junk posts getting more votes and earning more Steem than post with original content that is actually adding to the social value to the platform.
Hopefully, this only growing pains for a new social media platform. I do see a lot upside to this type of model. Hopeful, our culture will embrace and support @ned's vision.