Lea,
thank you for this. I've been trying to understand AMP and REO and your post was helpful, the white paper was not so much.
I have also written about what i think some of the shortcomings of steem are imho and voiced some of the challenges I see: https://steemit.com/steem/@knircky/i-love-steem-the-price-is-starting-to-hurt-one-last-bullet
I do agree that there are issues, however steem to me is still better than anything else i am aware of.
Of course synero could be even better, since steem is clearly not perfect.
The fact that there is the luck factor that is part of steem is not automatically bad, but i agree with you the effect is too high at the moment.