Great post - this echoed a lot of my thoughts exactly. Specifically about retention, I think a lot of the problem is misconception actually. It's actually SUPER EASY to earn STEEM right now on here. The problem is that everything is shown with a $ so people just see that their post got $0.10 rather than what it really got - $0.10 worth of STEEM. There's a big difference there.
I just wrote a post about this exact topic actually which is below. I'd appreciate your thoughts if you have time to read it. I think if people understood this the retention rate on here would be much higher.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@yabapmatt/how-to-value-steemit-reward-payouts
Cheers. I read you post. I doubt very much 1 Steem will ever be worth $4,000, but I appreciate your overall point. Thanks for reading!