"If by some magic coders can make it impossible to capitalize off of the blockchain, that'd be the day that the investors' bail."

What investors?

Capital is not only attainable via one particular mechanism. Profiteering and investment are both productive of ROI, but the former does so by destroying a business enterprise, and the latter does so by building a business up in value. Steem has no investors, because extracting value from content via stake weighting is profiteering, and capital gains aren't forthcoming on the platform as a result.

"There seems to be a concerted effort from people who code the blockchain to manipulate human behavior so that people act in the desired way, but is this possible?"

There is no endeavor that isn't constrained by the laws of physics. Code is infinitely mutable, and can be deployed so as to encourage such a variety of behaviour. This is trivially understood. What is not trivial is to ascertain how code will be successful at encouraging or discouraging particular behaviours when a limited number of devs deploy code per their limited understanding in an environment that is comprised of a relatively unlimited number of actors, with relatively unlimited understanding.

Clearly, perfection isn't possible, but that doesn't excuse obvious mistakes. Neither does it encourage physics to forgive failure to rectify error. Physics doesn't forgive.

People, OTOH, all too readily forgive and forget, unless physics makes it impossible.

We'll see tomorrow.

Thanks!