Many many points to think about. I read also many comments here. I'm now here for about 10 months and draw my opinion on that based on experiences, decisions made, my journey. To get it structured i wanna make a list:

1. initial distribution, non-linear rewards: it created something like superhuman in my mind with huge amounts of SP out of almost nothing.. good and evil kings, like a Mr. Manhattan from the movie Watchmen - we call it whales here, i have always mixed feelings about that huge inequality since the beginning - i creates devotees, especially under new Steemians and it is something which is set in stone, like Titans who formed and control the world. They could upvote you massively they could downvote or flag you until you're in hell.. i had a case where someone was desperated because he was haunted by a whale because of religious reasons.. that is something what should never happen.. but it does.. one wrong word or sentence and it could happen, sadly.

2. your voice is worth something - for sure something, more or less depending on your visibility, popularity, sympathy, boosting, trending - from the beginning i talked to myself - let others decide what's worth what you are writing and the community did. Because there is no algorithm who decides what is valuable. You can see the whole crypto market sentiment in the payouts. We had this incredible pump Dec/Jan my payouts rose, we had this terrible decline after that my payouts crumbled (not just because of the price) and nowadays i'm constantly around over $1 per post average. Is that good or bad? Honestly i have mixed feelings. The best strategy if you wanna improve something is to ask good questions. I'm thinking now for months about that since @freiheit50 wondered why i have in his eyes such low payouts for my content.. my answer was i'm not so good at networking. But i ask myself sometimes is that true, there are other reasons? I get more followers each day and i'm thankful for that, it's a good feeling even you don't know why someone follows you.

3. self-upvoting - i stopped that completely now months ago - it felt bad at some point even i did it just once per post. It was a moral decision for me to use my VP in other ways and hope it helps.

4. Minnowbooster delegation - currently i delegate to others since a few months i think with @minnowsupport is among, but also on the market without checking in detail who is behind more looking for a high ROI - i'll change that because of similar reasons like 3. and your thoughts, but i'll finally wanna point out something fundamentally about human beings in my last point..

5. Minnowbooster vote-selling: i do that to use my SP when i not active at 75% percent randomly. I thought more than once about the impact on Steemit if i see who bought my vote. I don't know who is behind and that is also an moral issue for me, because i support others boosting their posts now, but like 4. i have a strong opinion my personal feelings are mean nothing. I use it until now because it generates good rewards for further powering up long term and i have also some liquidity for other purposes on hand. I admit, yes it is selfish in some way and my idea is to use my VP more for selected authors in the future via Steemvoter (Streemian doesn't worked reliable).. if i'm not active. It is never a substitute to get in contact with an author, commenting and discussing, that's the lifeblood of such platform.. bots should be just emergency helpers but are misused too often for completely automatic voting

6. generosity - i would say im not generous enough in comparison to people who give all their money to others. I give my full upvotes to great comments and posts, even if it need days to regenerate my voting power sometimes after a special campaign or realized idea and don't benefit from Minnowbooster vote selling at that time. I don't know if this is enough but i'm glad if i find a gem of a post or seeing the efforts in a valuable comment under my post.

7. Excessive use of bid-bots. I know a case and don't wanna call the user name who massively boosted his posts. The thing about that was we were something like friends (in terms of a social media platform) til the day i realized behind his double-digit payouts were just bid-bots where he figured out the best times to bid with his bucks and then got huge payout. I was very disappointed and broke off contact immediately. Honestly i tried that too with Minnowbooster which is a safe and fair way in terms of paying and receiving additional value where you just gamble with bid-bots.. or you found loophole.. but i personally stopped also boosting my posts months ago and i'm always a bit angry if i think of the fake value of posts which someone generates in the eyes of others.. it is a dangerous distortion of public perception!

8. money doesn't bring happiness, money is just a tool - 100% agree - we need the feeling of contribution, that we worth something or like Einstein said after the question what is the purpose of life: We are here to serve others, what else could that be? Giving is much more satisfying than taking. I invested a greater amount of money for two reasons to have more influence and participate on the value appreciation long term. With the influence it shows also your character if you belong to the good or evil kings.. or between in my point of view.

9. the value of STEEM - often it's not so obvious if you using Steemit for granted, don't thinking about the technology behind.. and that's the great thing also, because a user should not think about the technology behind, he should use it like a natural extension. Big achievement for the beacon project Steemit i think. When i see also other projects like DTube, DSound, DLive, DMania, DPixify, Super 8 Ball Club it's an amazing ecosystem. I'm excited to see the impact of SMT.

10. human nature - yes.. and this is now the worst part for me to write about, because my opinion is that your long term approach on a social media platform is something which cannot work for the whole community. That is something which works for a handful of people who have this vision, these long term goals.. but look at typical social media platforms we must accept that there are many people who just wanna post a picture of a strawberry cake and get their rewards.. AND if a system like Steemit provide the army of bots they will use it.. they will excessively use it until death of the platform.. until the whole reward pool is wiped out! The sounds harsh even in my mind.. but i think the only solution to avoid this long term harm for the platform is to prevent with a HF who permit the use of such things completely. We cannot convincing millions of people to do not what is offered by the system! If i see the misuse (or the effects) of the trending page this is another topic. But my conclusion is.. we should change some parameters in the Steemit ecosystem, avoiding massive abuse with code not just with ideals, it never works in the real word!

That my thoughts from my perspective currently, overall i'm optimistic. My hope HF20 can do something good with code for the long term success!