Thanks for the reply @niallon11, your support does mean something since the people that are in a position to actually make these changes are going to be further incentivised to develop them if there is a strong outcry from the community to add them.

I really like the approach you mentioned as well with a token that is rewarded indefinitely that can then be traded for Steem. I actually still don't know and have never heard a strong justification for the 7 day expiration date on posts. I agree with you that this is a HUGE disincentive for content creators to produce valuable content on Steem.

And I think that's actually probably the crux of the problem here on Steem is misaligned incentives. If you're a very large stakeholder, the design of the system incentivises you to delegate to bidbots or sell votes.

If you're a content creator, the design of the system incentivises low quality, but regular(daily) content. Since it only has 7 days to earn rewards, basically no discovery system, and the UX is only made for upvotes and not donations which equals overall low return especially when crypto prices are down.

The silver lining here is that all of these things are fixable. People like you taking the time to comment and spread these ideas is exactly what's needed, so thanks again! :)