Somewhere in a comment — it may have been on @themarkymark's long post asking for Steem suggestions — I saw a brief comment: "Everyone is here for the money, whether they admit it, or not."

In reading your post, I got to thinking about that again.... and how that statement — whether technically "true," or not — invariably creates a bias in terms of what is developed and implemented, and what is not.

Captchas are a great idea and would potentially return Steemit somewhat to the model of being a "social content site."

But do enough people actually want a social content site? Or have we already fallen beyond the "event horizon" to where Steemit can never be anything but some version of a "cash grab" because that paradigm dominates everything?