@nedspeaks Well said and unfortunately I pretty much agree with your conclusions. I'm just a few months into my exploration of Steemit and the longer i'm here, the more it seems there's no where to go - if that makes any sense.

In the few months here, I have not seen a SINGLE improvement for the user.

This sentence describes one of the most serious issues with the Steemit platform, and you are 100% correct that there is really nothing being done to remedy it. As far as I know there have been no new functions or improvements to existing capabilities - ever...

To highlight only one of my "issues" with functionality, the formatting tools (markdown-editor) are HORRIBLE!!! It reminds me of the old typewriter style word processors that were just barely better that hand writing on lined paper - or worse yet Word Perfect... AAHHHH (me pulling my hair out)... How hard would it be to incorporate Google Docs or MS Word.? With all the brain power floating around in here, I' pretty sure it could be done.

The following is a paragraph taken from page 6 of the Steem whitepaper:

Steem is designed around a relatively simple concept: everyone’s meaningful contribution to the community should be recognized for the value it adds. When people are recognized for their meaningful contributions, they continue contributing and the community grows. Any imbalance in the give and take within a community is unsustainable. Eventually the givers grow tired of supporting the takers and disengage from the community.

I quoted that to also shed light on the underlying problem (what I think at least) The developers obviously recognized the potential to abuse the system, but it doesn't appear there were any safeguards to prevent what we see happening - where a majority of the reward pool is consistently awarded (taken) by a small percentage of users. The fish in a pond analogy is well suited and accurately describes how big fish will eat all the food and if little fish get in their way, they'll eat them too. (I could give examples of that actually happening)

I think we all know what the problems are, the question is what can we do about them - if anything.? Everyone should take a good look at where the most influential (valuable) votes are coming from and where they're going on a consistent basis. Serious scrutiny should also be directed at just how much SP is wrapped up in all the bots "swimming around" / bid bots, curation bots, upvote bots, etc. etc. I was amazed when I started adding it all up - I don't have all the numbers yet but I think the total amount of SP just in bots is greater than the bottom 80% of users.

Sorry for the rant bro...
I guess one good thing is - my conversation with @doc.hodes led me here...