I don't pretend to know the absolute truth on this matter and I respect the opinion of everyone. I'd love to be convinced either way whether it be for or against.

I agree with your first point that people don't come here because the Steem content is great and that's an issue.

I've been looking at the youtube trending page everyday for years now and someday I don't even click on any of the video because they're all bullshit video created to make money without any real substance. That's the second most popular website where all the supposedly best content creators are and yet all the population of the world is sometime not enough to produce quality content.

We can't expect Steem to create super duper content right now even on its trending page because there's so few content creators compare to Youtube or reddit but it will come. A lot of it is a question of numbers.

As for the main point, if everyone vote for themselves, Steem become pure POS minus the reward that goes to the witnesses.

The minnows would make cents as this is the value of their votes but that's not even the issue. When new Steem are created, if no new buy orders are created on the order books, newly created Steem dilute the price of Steem and doesn't increase it.

If there is 1 buy order at 5$ for 10 Steem those who receive the newly created Steem can now sell at that price too but in the end not every Steem can be sold at that price, in fact as I said, the price of all Steem has been diluted if no new orders are created thus the reason why it's important for us to get the Steem economics right.

Achieving this requires much stronger transparency with identity verification and dispute resolution systems combined with incentive structures that disincentives self-voting (like n2 curve). @dan

So I do feel the n2 curve disincentives self-voting and if it doesn't then it's easier for larger shareholders to police the abusers.

Right now it's profitable for anyone to abuse the system while under a n2 curve it's only really profitable for larger shareholders and these will be easier to spot because there is infinitely less of them and they will also be easier to police them by the even larger shareholders.

One more thing, Steem popularity shouldn't be part of the equation here. Steem should aim to become addictive whether or not there's a money incentive. Other website have achieve this and there's no reason it can't be achieved.

Let's not forget, the inflation is going down overtime, meaning there will less Steem for a growing number of Steemians.