RE: @surfermarly is right to say that greed has overtaken community spirit on Steemit.
As in many other communities, the good will survive the bad (or people with other intentions, bad sounds quite negative). As far as steemit wins popularity there are always people with little knowledge but with the dollar signs (or steem dollar signs as you please) in their eyes. But Im convinced the long run stays for the 'real'deal... Invest in the platform, give back to the community... But keep producing good content... I know I will (or at least try)... For me, I'm putting back in all my earnings in steem power to help other people who have (just as I have and had) a diffcult time beeing noticed... That's the flip side of becoming a populair platform....a lot of people , a lot of posts, a lot to read :).... But we have to watch for it all together and make sure to keep the platform where it is designed for "for people, by people"... Have a great evening all together.. !!
Presently it's "of the devs, by the devs, and for the devs." I think there needs to be a rise of a middle class of content providers/curators to save the community just like the rise of a middle class saved capitalist societies from socialist revolutions. They need to tweak the platform to funnel more steempower to more people. Actually ALLOW the labors of the middle class to be rewarding. Heck, why not delegate some steempower from the pool every time someone rises one point in reputation, then extract that slowly later on when their rep gets to, say 53 (notice how I put it just out of reach of yourself LOL), and don't let them cash out their steempower until they reach that point. Make it a loan and call the loan back if they don't reach some benchmarks in a timely manner that show they are engaged in the community. I think we can all agree that reputation indicates value to the community much better than steempower.