I agree with a lot of what you said - and that's partially the reason I built chainBB and didn't focus on the reward aspects of Steem at all. It's all about discussion and community building, and allowing us (the users) to build the community of people we want to see.

It's damn near impossible to do on Steemit just due to the fact that a ton of users are purely in it for the money, buying votes, self voting, and trying to blog about what they think will earn the most.