Thank you for sharing your thoughts @oaldamster ! Much appreciated!
Regarding your "3rd parties" remark, I think it's in every Steemian's best interest to let the platform truly succeed, which is - mostly - achieved by improving "the Steem utility vector", both internally and externally.

I like the Utopian-IO collective a lot for example: that's a perfect catalyzer to attract way more tech-savvy users to Steemit, collectively create new and enhance current Steem interfaces / sub-platforms, increase market attention, and intrinsically pump the steem market capitalization. That's in everybody's best interest IMO, and will probably change the current ownership distribution as well.