I agree that Steemit has a lot of potential for future growth, especially when ppl have been so hype about digital currencies lately. However, the way posters are exploiting the pay out as it is right now. I do not think Steemit can get very far from this hype bubble.
Regarding your 2nd point about successful poster ability to create valuable or original the content - I really DOUBT that.
- A post that literally copy/paste the news about famous Investor interest in Steemit got $10k. A reply that basically say here is a full story got $1k .
I do not think that content is THAT MUCH original or adding that much VALUE to Steemit to be justified for that pay out
I wrote about that yesterday in my post here
https://steemit.com/steemit/@fiver/stemmit-is-a-wide-ride-but-when-will-the-fun-stop
Still your post has some interesting commons point to mine. UP VOTED
Your first point had to do with "liquidity" of the community right? With BTC, it was easily manipulated previously because the market depth was so small that whales can easily make a splash. This is getting less and less frequent with the price arriving at a stability that makes most old school BTC hodlers uneasy. One would hope the same will happen with Steem eventually as more and more active users are there is scaffold the integrity of the economy. It will take a lot of work but hopefully the economy of Steemit will be adjusted just right that afford good actors enough power to prevent the spam fest like MySpace.
Your second point can be consider as a flaw in the human group nature. Good looking girls can post about what they ate and garner hundreds of likes on Facebook. One could touch on the correct answers to the most important questions and no one can give a damn. This is democracy and the very nature of social media and there is nothing much we can do to change because the audience are like that.