They have a nice system at minds.com, where you get 500 points just for being online there for one hour - you can use the accumulated points to reward people's work or advertise your own.
It's not ideal but, trying to be constructive - they have a small team and I guess steemit suffers from the same problem. Need upgrades but what to do first ?
The easiest solution would be to have a couple of iron-fisted moderators clean up the system, but that's unpopular these days and the way it is, they can always blame the partakers as opposed to the makers.
This way, people tend to upvote themselves alone. I'm having a debate with a BTS propagandist on a thread he upvotes himself - boom, $6.40
This guy takes advantage of the tether crisis (we need more FUD) - by telling people they should invest in bit$ at bitshares.org and ignores that to buy one bit$ derivative there, you will have to send $2.75, then says that "bit$ are backed by 1.75 that amount in bitshares!" and therefore "secure."
People are encouraged to pay for their own safety and be grateful for it, this shows off general steemit mentality rather well. This network is a marketing instrument and people are expected to put effort into it to redistribute the money they pay - what else has human economy ever been ?
I can only marvel at all the people who seem to be quite unable to even remotely understand this.
Thing is, you cannot trust human nature - herd animals always need a hierarchy when things get serious and aren't just about exchanging opinions.
And you can see how even opinions are being discouraged in the momentary global political climate, because they will eventually change the setup of the hierarchy... live and let live is no longer an option.