Wow, upvoted you from two accounts! This must have taken an amazing amount of time and work. I wish you'd earned $1,000. For time's sake I won't comment on all that I wish to here, but

1. Yes I've been wanting some sort of "residual affiliate program based on long term success" to be implemented. I've "Signed up" 6 ppl in real life. It takes a bit of work to convince them, and then you have to teach them! However, they recently announced a "bounty" if you can sign up 500 celebrities. So I suppose that's progress :P
2. Yes, the Buy & Sell is ridiculously complicated, and scary to touch for that matter. I don't think improving what we see is the answer, as far mainstreaming Steem and Steemit. It has to be as simple as PayPal for instance to go huge. And if anyone can make it so, it will be the Steem community. There's laws, and banks, and probably the U.N. to deal with for all I know, but what I want and what I think most want is instantaneous "direct" withdrawals and deposits from a real bank account - USD to Steem and vice-versa. The fact that I've seen html for payments gives me hopes that this community will overcome all of the obstacles to this eventually. Your points on that are totally correct, but I hope are ultimately short term solutions.
   Okay maybe I should go write my own article on this now ;)