Some interesting observations here. I hadn't heard of reddcoin.
There's a group of us, #teamaustralia that's worth a look.
The problems of spam and self upvoting have solutions, it's just a question of how the developers want to tackle them.
We need to remember that steemit is still in beta, and there's a good chance the devs don't want to grow too quickly (this is fraught with danger).
We're the rats in the maze at the moment.
Yes, it could be a lot more straightforward, but then what would the observers learn?
Following you.