I agree with @quinneaker quite a bit, but I do want to address something that was said. The main cause for the "posts not nearly as high as they used to be" is not necessarily caused from more people joining! More people joining does create more competition but it should also bring in more investors and interaction, but the problem is people are not using their SP that way. The problem is that there is less SP being spread around through curation because so many are now selling their vote instead of curating. So now anyone with money can buy lots of big upvotes and thats why you see shit posts on the trending page with all the top voters being vote selling bots.

More people joining is good for the platform, it should increase interaction and quality of posts! Before vote selling was all the rage, there was more interaction and more upvotes spread around to more people and it was a much more effective system for recognizing good content! The price of STEEM obviously has the most direct effect on post payouts. I don't mean to be contrary, I just don't think more people joining the platform should be looked at as the main cause for "posts not being nearly as high as they used to be".