Authors that reliably trend are perfect vehicles for mining the rewards pool, and bots are programmed to time their votes so as to maximally extract rewards.

Linking SP to VP has created of Steemit a rewards mining mechanism, and the social media is merely a gloss that lends it the appearance of something with other value.

@sweetsssj will continue to trend and create a mechanism that allows curation rewards to be extracted from the pool, until VP is delinked from SP holdings. I am not holding my breath waiting for the change.

The SEC's recent announcement that it will regulate cryptocurrencies that operate as securities, as Steem does, will force a change. Unless there is a dramatic revision of how VP is weighted, Steemit will be regulated out of existence.

Fakebook will love that.

I won't.

Edit: I don't want to confuse the possibility that something can be done with an assumption that it was intended to be done. People make mistakes, and the devs may have been saints.

OTOH...