What was uttered in the end...
"get myself some meth" ..thewhatnow..?

What you said makes sense. I believe when communities gets implemented the control over curation and spam will be much more powerful. Community Liaison hinted to this in another comment chain.

I also suggested something similar elsewhere that aligns with your idea of placing a value on what gets delegated by whales. Essentially a system of rewarding investors that DO invest in members that WILL provide valuable content. On the flipside, making it a loss for those that throw their SP around to shitposts and spammers. Thus the top is feeding the bottom, but only those with potential and intention to add quality.

The other issue I see with steemit is, that some crap accounts really shouldn't even be able to engage with some quality posts. If they do, then some requirements could be implemented. Such as minimum rep or minimum comment length. This is highly controversial but it would solve the spammers that find high paid posts or comments and attach themselves to them in hope of an up-vote.

Hopefully communities does bring some of these changes. It will be a lot easier to manage either way when tightly nit subgroups are able to identity the good and bad of the chosen community. Some healthy competition might even arise. As communities compete for that Utopian Dream.