Here are two thoughts I’ve mulled over for some time that your article touches on...

1. The expectation that Steemit should be advertising and marketing for aggressive growth is misplaced right now. The Velocity hardfork and a revamp of signup procedures aren’t in place to allow this yet. Even if just 1 Steem is required to own enough bandwidth to interact properly with the blockchain, then we cap out at 250 million user accounts (which sounds like a lot but isn’t globally!)... and that can even only occur if all existing users sell the vast majority of their stake to make it available to new users! I know a scalable rethink of this system is in the works now, and that needs finished before anything else can be expected.
2. New user expectations need to be set. The simple logic I try to convey when people lament the earning struggles of minnows is this...
   Steem has a 10% inflation rate annually. (We’ll keep it simple for this example, it’s actually less, decreasing, and content and creator rewards are reduced by witness pay, etc). If an account signup starts with 20 free Steem (again, totally optimistic, but we’re keeping it simple and best case scenario!) then that same account having 22 Steem in 1 years time is right on target. Yep. Earning 2 Steem in 1 year is good. For every account that overperforms this metric, other accounts must underperform and earn even less.
   We need to be transparent on this. Steem and the Steem blockchain are wonderful tools to facilitate payment processing, advertising, crowdsourcing, and more. The expectation that solving Steem distribution inequality, vote buying, collusion, etc. will lead to an explosion in minnow rewards is false. (Although those things should still be addressed) If a minnow has 10 Steem and a year from now they have 11, that’s to be expected. We need other use cases and marketing beyond the angle of “Blog. Get Paid.” That’s an over promise & underdeliver that’s hurting us right now.