I venture to guess a lot of Steemit users probably have the same fear... so the word-of-mouth networking is amounting to mostly crickets chirping in darkness.

Probably. At least for now and for those who weren't able to offer more than the idea of money or the support of communities. I a lot of the onboarding people did was to bring people in with promises and then let them float. This is not a place for everyone yet but in time it will be. the people who lost their account keys with a few Steem in it might regret that one day :D

I'm only upset that no number of cooperating individuals will ever be large enough to match the power of one whale who has the system reinforced monopoly on vote power.

This is changing too I suspect, especially when earning moves away from Steem and onto SMTs