Your comment is quite relevant to the issue at hand. The complexity of the factors involved in price of Steem in the evolving market preclude my possession of precise understanding, and beyond basic principles, I don't attempt it.

It is basic principles I do attempt to address in my OP. Including incentives to seek ROI by effecting improvements that in turn drive capital gains is a trait that Steem should obviously incorporate, and the extraction of rewards without driving capital gains is what Steem creates incentive to do instead. All kinds of rhetoric, including that from profiteers that would prefer to continue their parasitic extraction of funds without additional expense, has been forthcoming, but none of it actually acknowledges this basic principle, and therefore will not improve the situation regarding Steem's performance or generation of capital gains for investors.

This reflects that actual experienced investors are scarce as hen's teeth on Steem, and those that ninjamined the initial stake prior to Steemit being introduced have other skills, primarily mathematics heavy programming and technical computer development. Absent experience imbuing an investment vehicle with value to produce capital gains in real markets, the skills brought to bear by extant stakeholders seem to have developed the rudimentary grasp of extractive profiteering that seems to dominate Steem presently. Sadly, the consequences of such policies will only produce experience after mistakes are made, and the consequences eventuate, unless those folks educate themselves on investing practices, which is why I seek to promote that.

Losing users that are here is extremely expensive, as gaining new users is orders of magnitude more difficult than keeping those that have already shown such interest and undertaken the effort to sign up. Again, folks inexperienced in business just don't know that. Games may be more suitable a use case for their purposes, as the complexities of the social dynamics underlying social media are not known expertise of computer enthusiasts in general. This tends to prevent conservation of users and the pressure they put on price to create capital gains, exacerbating Steem's underperformance.

Social media is difficult to grasp the import of, particularly for folks whose expertise in technical matters, rather than social dynamics. I note the far more transformative potential of social media, and financial rewards that makes possible, than gaming. This is probably far less apparent to computer enthusiasts, whose personal interests are contrary to that reality. They are thus acting per their interests and skillsets, and creating a platform that avoids the most beneficial potential for capital gains in the real world, rather than the virtual.

Thanks!