Steem (and so many other blockchains) are indeed somehow a lottery; But as you, I do think Steem is one of the few blockchains that has a larger, much larger potential over many others. You hit the nail when stating "It is likely that if on Steem we had spent more time collaborating on diversified projects and less time bickering over the reward pool, we would be further along the production line..." As you mentioned, we are learning, but we would've indeed be much further when we would've collaborate more. Better to have 1 streaming platform, than many of them; Better to have services with simple to use interface for users like you and I, or business to be onboarded providing them with yet another marketing channel. I would love for Steem to be used by journalists, espacially those that are independent. But, I think we don't have the right UI for followers and the right tools for such journalists to onboard them, and keep them onboarded. I would love to work with developers to make this happen. Anyways, also I would spend part of my earnings on Steem to make things happen, if I win the lottery. Until then, I spend my time curating, blogging, learning and interacting with Steem in the middle :)