Summary by @tldr:

It seems to match up with my desire to bring some of Eileen Workman's philosophy, of making a currency that relates to the Earth, so we have a resource-based economy - which is also why I'd want to eventually contact members of The Venus Project about this.
One phrase, as I was about done with the table of contents, that stands out to me like a sore thumb, is "Solving Organic Discovery via Search Engine Optimization Shifting Toward Blockchain-based Attribution."
So, in other words, we live in a world where people do not understand the long-term value of a/the fair evaluation of their and other's material, such that measures against this self-destructive mode of interaction ensure the long-term success of steemit.
The deeper question is, can the system be done such that doing that sort of "cheap shot" simply isn't worth the effort in comparison with just posting your own content, because that would subvert more insidious and planned attacks.
"The challenge is creating a system capable of identifying what contributions are needed and their relative worth in a way that can scale to an unbounded number of people."
Were it not for the "2 year" thing, which necessitates a large payout to make each week "worth it" in terms of money or possibility, NO, because you can't get voted up by, say, 10 people, get $1 for it, and then cash it out into Paypal.I'm saying that there's a false equivalence here.
In speaking about the "costs" of micropayment, what's being missed or left out is how very much MACRO the payments have to be for anything to happen!Likewise, the tipping is about the generated content on the system, which could amount to 100 spammy posts -- it's contribution!