I agree with you completely. I think the way people are marketing this is all wrong. The fact that the monetary aspect is what is touted gets people here thinking solely about money. This is a problem. We need to focus upon decentralization and other attributes.
I agree that we are Steemit does not have the Reddit features. Perhaps the update with communities will give it that feel.
There is a new application that is identical to Reddit called parley.io. This is another application that could really take off.