Steem can't do anything is there are no buyers (investors). Real authors don't need charity from @acydio or some random whale from "premine" period. They need a good platform like Medium.
Steem is getting there. After Communities it will be ready for a lot more people. After SMT's anyone will be able to take their shot and the dependency will be off of Steemit.com eventually.
The government is already taking peoples money. The key is for them to do something with it that actually benefits the people of the country, instead of just making our military that's already 10x bigger than the next one, even bigger and bombing more people so companies can sell more bombs.