I am sad I missed the opportunity to upvote and resteem this post. You make some very sobering point and Steem is long overdue for a wake up call about them.
I don't think that Steem itself is a Ponzi scheme but it most definitely has Ponzi elements that have been tolerated, nay, encouraged. One such Ponzi element is the bid bot.
We have fought vote farming together and I have come to the conclusion that vote selling is merely the other side of the same coin. When I flagged a vote farmer today and was asked the question "What about upvote bots?", this made me stop and really think about it.
I cannot really make a meaningful distinction between the two. They both divert effective curation. I don't know if this will ever change...
Not a problem at all. I agree that the upvote bots are a reckless use of SP. The point of the vesting schedule is that the owner of SP is supposed to suffer the long term consequences of how the stake is used, and people's willingness to rent out their SP through vote bots confirm to me that we need either a much longer vesting schedule or a lot more education about the relevant economics (maybe both).
It's conceivable that bid bots could be used by charitable people to amplify the SP with which they upvote quality content and grow the network, but the economic incentives involved strongly favor abusive use instead.
I also certainly agree that Steem is not inherently a Ponzi scheme, and that it isn't currently a Ponzi scheme in practice. I just think people should recognize that all it would take for it to become one is for people to vote predominately for dividends rather than wages/reinvestment.