I get where you’re coming from, but mediocrity is always going to rule the day. Because the majority is mediocre - by definition. Look at the content on Facebook and twitter. Mediocre at best.
There are efforts like @curie to find the best content and put some weight behind it, so there are definitely people out there who agree with you. It’s just never going to be a majority.
The great thing about the blockchain is that you could build your own interface and create the curated environment you are looking for. Just off the top of my head it seems like you could build your own weighting mechanism to replace /trending or /hot with a list that weights votes by a voter’s follower count or some other quality score.
that is what i think the end result will be, the only difference is, why cant it just happen here on steemit? or should steemit be the totality of all steem blockchain content that is ever published? If thats the case, then steemit shouldn't focus on the communities aspect. Instead they should let communities build themselves.
Thats something ive been interested in doing for a while, but the problem is, there arent any good writers here...yet. perhaps its a motto of "if you build, they will come".