Aggrandizing!

Heh. That single word brings back so many emotions, most of them not good (though I guess I can laugh at it now, considering the harm has already been done).

Maybe with an SPS in place we can act a bit more like Dash. Prior to that, the money spent on Steem only came from Steemit, inc. Still does. If the SPS was truly a DAC with full transparency, I could get behind your idea of letting that DAC dynamically direct things. I also think it would be confusing for investors who like Steem for passive income (which, ironically, may be the thing hurting Steem the most via bidbots, automated self-voting. etc). If the returns fluctuate each month by the whims of the SPS board, that could be really confusing.

Either way, having to demonstrate value created for value received sounds like a good way to ensure value is distributed responsibly. In theory, that's what proof of brain is supposed to be doing. Instead, it's easier to put things on auto pilot with a bot.

As to the many good points you make about marketing, does that really have to happen from Steemit alone? Witnesses, app owners, authors... anyone in the community can put together larger marketing projects and seek funding to implement them.

Maybe part of the problem is we are decentralized. We don't have a single entity representing us other than Steemit, Inc and (IMO) they haven't done a very good job so far (and I think, personally, that's due to inexperienced leadership up to this point).