I see what you mean. It's certainly a double edged sword.

On the positive note for the new user, they can instantly make greater rewards than when i started. My first post made 0.17 cents initially and paid out 0.00$ lol.

On the other hand, my friends who have finally joined (past couple weeks) after much encouragement have made like 10-20$ on their first posts which is really apporx 5 times that.

I'm betting that If they had made 17 cents well...lol I believe that the spike is partly responsible for keeping a lot of new users on steemit which is ultimately good.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: I believe the difference is in what you do with it all. And unfortunately bc of Steemit's decentralized nature, ppl are free to do whatever they want....The larger accounts might be getting greedy instead of thinking ahead to the fact that if they help grow the new users base instead of trying to get more Steem (when they probably have enough) they would ultimately be helping to drive the price up and popularity of the coin which would be way more profitable for them lol.

I'm with you in some sense tho, I hope the spike doesn't last too long. I'm just appreciating it right now more than I'm worried about the abusers in the short term I guess. I'm not going to be able to stop them currently, however I can at least make a bit of a difference using my little influence as I see fit right!?

Some direct result of the spike for me has been growing the shit out of my SP and in turn being able to reward all the entries for "Steemit Sandwich Contest" with post rewards even if they don't win. Furthermore, for a few months I was able to dish out 25 Steem or more in prizes per/week.