I agree, the comments are the "discussion" of the original concept / idea.
And to me they hold value.
I don't profess to understand the details re "rewards", what I have seen are stats in regards to 50% of new users leaving. If 50% of new customers in my business didn't hang around, after I'd spent time & energy attracting them.... I would want to know why.
My 'guess' on that is the reward scheme is currently incorrectly focused to support platform growth (eg 400K -> 4m or 40m sort of growth) but maybe that is not the steemit plan? I don't know :-)