At some point we really need to get together and talk about this mythical "cream floating to the top" process that you seem to believe will exist, but which there is no documentation of the process that meets that parameter. Proof of brain, proof of stake, they were both supposed to let people self organize around the idea of the cream of the crop which could be raised from amongst a cacophony of voices. All it would take was a few people out looking, and a lot of murdered electrons along the way.
In practice, they found that people want to be paid to do something they would not otherwise ordinarily do, and that is search through a bunch of content that they may or may not be interested in, decide which of it is worthwhile, and pass it on to the next group down. They want to engage with the process that brings them value but not necessarily the strict value of the Steem coin.
There just isn't enough infrastructure to actually cater to the needs of an active ecology of funds. Someone needs to be able to come up, say "I'm a writer, this is the stuff that I write, would any of you like to invest in my project?" And to have you both give noes and yeses, in proportion to how much risk those funds were handed over with.
Curation cannot save the platform, despite all the wall and worded attempts. Curation responds, which is why it is so able to encompass all of the behaviors of bid bots. They just add tighter deadlines, is all.
Pretty much everything about hard for 21 makes me think that it was put together by people who never actually had to deal with people. And maybe that's right.
Regardless, we're stuck with it, so we will end up looking to see what it brings early on.