At first I didn't agree with the idea of non-linear rewards because I had patience and hope that SMTs can save the day. The problem is SMTs will not arrive until 2019 and Steem economics right now are completely dysfunctional. It's very hard to support a platform which is neither sustainable nor rewarding high quality content. The Steem of 2017 with all it's flaws at least was rewarding high quality content in exchange for those flaws. Now the quality of content even if it's still being generated includes high quality it is a situation where the discovery process is pretty much non-existent.
The best content cannot be discovered or rewarded. In other words there is not much reward for blogging or generating content no matter how high quality. If the reward scaled up with the quality then it would favor the generation of higher quality content over time but unfortunately I'm not seeing this.
So I could just as well post cat pictures and upvote myself each day to get the same kind of reward I would get if I post a 5 page essay. This isn't to say that cat pictures can't or shouldn't be able to be rewarded or even be the top rewarded on the trending page but it would have to be a very special cat picture is my point (very popular).
It is impossible for the platform to reward high quality content.
First of all, you will never attract creators with any talent to Steem. Best case scenario, is to provide a place that might reward a content creator as he is developing his skill set - and before he goes mainstream and moves on.
Second, most users aren't very good at picking out high quality content.
Third, "high quality" is subjective - you will never get anything close to a consensus as to what constitutes high quality. For example, younger audiences prefer political memes to political essays. Which one gets the upvotes is more determined by demographics than content quality.
Fourth, you will never get people to upvote a 'stranger' over upvoting her 'friend'. This is a form of social media. People will reward friends and family members first. (As they should).
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