Great thought provoking post - here is my waffling on thoughts haha..
My experience with Steem has been a mixed one, but I have to say right now I'm borderline hanging around.

Many of the people I brought to Steem have left when the $ worth plummeted, ads came on, yet their contents on get rewards for 7 days? ok I get it, its a psychological thing to get fresh cool content on the platform, but there has to be more for the content owners... before it lives on forever delivering value to STeEm (the balance isn't right, and people feel like they are being had - social media to me is more about how you feel ).

Instead of leaving I try to invest my ideas and spare time and have tried to get involved. I firmly believe for the casual poster Steemit is a good place, but making $10 for your rare brown hyena cub photo's is only going to take you so far.

I'm a self taught programmer (small fry dev wannabee) and my Bro makes basic games puts them on Steam for download and few $ to get food on the plate. Our latest project was to have Steem rewards linked to a off platform PC game - yeah it ain't gonna change the world, its hard work but fun - it will appear to a group/certain type of community only.. Lots of STeem apps will appeal to different groups, if you set the reward balance right and the right people get some just and fair treatments theses small communities with thrive...but they need support. Too much support to the infrastructure and crypto DEV is happening and not enough spreading of the wealth..People see this and it leads to selfish behaviors.

If everyone just has a shot others will see all the different ideas and development going on - Steem needs to get out there as a happening place to develop on (with fair rewards for trying). You don't need to be an expert off the bat.

It would be great is someone would look at the small time projects and go you know what that's pretty cool, here's $999 worth of Steem. Power it up and keep being a good Steemian. If you suceed, donate $999 to the next project you see coming up (build a supportive dev steemian culture). If someone started doing that and the word got out, you would have ideas and dev's beating down the door.

For now, it's the big witness's and people with the big plans that get the support. People with money and making money, helping each other to make more...some of the true innovation is being drowned out.

Haha just my few Steem worth to add to the discussion - but I assume my voice will be drowned out again as I'm not whale or infrastructure supporter.