Couldn't have time to read the whole post, but just wanted to write this:
Imagine if in Facebook/Twitter, everything (the people you follow or not) without filtering appeared on your feed? Imagine if Reddit wasn't divided into subreddits while keeping every and each post as in one place: That is steemit right now.
When introducing someone new to the system, I believe we better take their hand in the first week and tell them what they should and shouldn't do, how they should treat the system and why they shouldn't care about abusers and shouldn't do the same.
That it is where the rich get richer feeding off the bottom dwellers of the pond and could not care less about the toxic environment the platform has become.
Sadly, that's right... Earning on steemit is Pay to Win game. But bear in mind, those whales worked hard to become what they are. (and I mean the good whales, not the ones who write terrible posts and depend only on vote bots.)
Those who have large amounts of STEEM POWER now, either bought it when it was cheap... Or made many posts worthy enough. These two kinds of people deserve to get richer considering they risked their time/money when STEEM started. (Of course, there is the third type who just abused from the start but won't talk about those.)
As the system is right now, I won't advice against using voting bots, I use them too (In a way that I feel acceptable of course.) But I love people refuse to use them, you're the best!!