Hey @benjojo. I hope your day is going well, my friend and thank you for such agreat post explaining your thoughts really clearly. I'm not as familiar as I could be with SMT's and their potential for the future of steem but I do share your concerns about the condition of the platform now and going forward, especially in terms of the abuse taking place and it's implications for expansion.
I've just posted a suggestion for confronting the abuse of vote buying and selling on the platform by way of the creation of a community bot to tackle the problem in a different way. If you have a few minutes, I'd appreciate your thoughts. It's a stab in the dark from a guy with not much technical understanding but I think it's an idea that could work.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tonyr/a-suggestion-for-ending-the-vote-buying-era-on-steemit
Cheers mate. Enjoy the rest of your day! :)