By progress I simply mean getting to "the top" having high SP. You are correct that you can just put your SBD into SP, but you still have to earn that SBD in the first place. I don't really expect to get very far here. I am a "blogger" on a platform that is 100% other bloggers. It does not have people who are passive viewers because there is nothing of value here to passive viewers. I don't mean to cast judgement on people's content here, but it isn't anything that you couldn't find on a blog or reddit. Hopefully that will change considering how much better this is for content creators.
I have been playing the game because I'm just curious to see how it goes. I have slowly built up to 100 followers, probably only a few of which are interested in my content. They all just want to trade upvotes. That's okay, but it's not a real content provider-content consumer relationship. Many of the whales get comments and upvotes because people are praying they can get "blessed" with an upvote, not because they genuinely want to consume the content. If a whale moved to a non-rewards platform, their viewership from Steemit would likely plummet.
I agree with you that vote buying will kill Steem, and I agree that the only option is to target the sellers. They are handing out free money on a street corner. To try to convince people to not take the money and go get a job instead is just foolish. It's not in line with human nature. People would rather get $50 out of Steem today with bid bots than work hard over the next few months and get $500. You cannot plea with them not to take the money by pointing out the damage they cause, because they have nothing invested in the platform. If they don't use bid bots, they'll allow some percentage of people to still have a healthy platform to make the $500, but as a result, most will likely not ever even get their $50.
It is for this reason that I don't plan to invest long term here. I put in money, I'm really not liking what I'm seeing right now, so I'm taking it out. I plan on sticking around and commenting. Being a viewer, since I think that's what Steemit needs most, but the way this whole thing is going gives people every reason to suck it dry, and no reasons to invest into it properly.
Hopefully I'm wrong.
The same conclusion I came today as well. I might not down power right away but I certainly won't put any more money in. And I also will stop shilling on other platforms. I only shill what I truly believe in.