RE: Are you a Steem 1 percenter? Do you know who is?
First thing that comes to mind is that IF Steemit bills itself as a "social content platform," the vast majority of accounts will be just like mine: very tiny, started with 3.00SP and didn't start here with the intention of "investing."
On the other hand, IF Steemit bills itself as "a place to make money," most people who make accounts here will be looking to make money, and that does NOT mean powering up, it means cashing out next week so you can buy pizza, or cell phone apps or whatever.
So, the problem you're describing, and a lot of people are aware of, starts with the root branding of Steemit, the venue. I'd be willing to guess that if all the effort and energy had gone into presenting Steemit as "a social content platform that allows content creators to become stake holders," we'd be looking at a different landscape, now.
Ten weeks of blogging and interacting and evidently using Steemit "appropriately" has gotten me to about 37 SP. Granted, it's a niche blog. But I have powered up pretty much every cent, except for those given away in contests.
Maybe by this time next year, I can claw and scrape my way to 500SP, and that would be pretty amazing. MOST people would look at that and declare "That's too frakkin' much work!" and they end up being all those dormant accounts.
Yes, "wall of text," I know. But I'm happy to give my 100% 0.006 upvote to you for this rant!
=^..^=
I am hoping that communities will help the niches. Let's say you make it to 500 SP in a year. What is the time worth to you? at current prices of 3 it is about 1500 dollars, not a great deal considering the effort. What about in 2 years if it is 50 dollars? This year you would have made 25,000. Next year, you might be able to add 750 more SP by working and building network. 2 years from today that will be worth 37500 at 50 dollars. During that time you could add another 1000 with a 50,000 value. 3 years hard work for 112,500 dollars and you still hold all your Steem and can use it to grow further. 5 years from now as competition is high and steem hard to get? So much work for so little is invalid if you believe in the long-view. I hope we are going to get there.