Social capital is indeed a valuable asset but for it to he worth, society itself still needs to have some value in it other than just moral support if you know what I mean. At the end of the day, life is a war of attrition of sorts but the strong survive and because of humanity's need for social, even the ones who behave badly are looked after to some degree now. There is a lot of cost to maintain a few but very little cost to behave badly toward the many.
I don't know if that makes sense but in my head it 'kinda' does.
Yes it does actually... this falls back to our understanding of meritocracy. First we must agree on what merit is before we try to polish a system that promotes it.
I remember reading somewhere that SMT's might fix some of these issues we are facing, meaning that a community for let's say Philosophy & Literature might decide to part ways with Steem's core blockchain (not technically, but my point stands) eliminating pre-mined stakes and coming up with a healthier distribution.
There are other big challenges of course, many of the people who might be interested in said SMT may not have the resources to get it off the ground.