Well the thing with YouTube monetization is that the path was always quite clear - the better the content, the more chances you'll have in succeeding. Steemit to a new user looks either random or rigged and that's a turn off. There simply isn't a straightforward way to understand why seemingly similar content has such wildly different valuation. Not without spending a considerable amount of time in trying to understand how the ecosystem works.

And once users do understand, well that's even worse. They quit, start sucking up, begging, finding ways to play the system, create scores of bots that are either trying to maximize profits for themselves, stabilize the system, go on righteous crusades. And of course some also just go about creating/consuming content they want, without bothering about the details behind it all :)

I mean let's see if all of this combined somehow leads to an end result where quality prevails, but I personally don't see the set up automatically pointing to it.

I do completely agree with you that the platform already created proponents that no other social media has ever seen. I mean come on, who ever went to the streets handing out flyers about how awesome Facebook or Twitter is. That's some serious enthusiasm there :).

It would be interesting to conduct a study on the effect of early success or failure in earning on Steemit, to see what effect it has on retention of users. One for the bots interested in long term flourishing of the platform ;)