Yeah, no.
I am not here simply to gain money, but rather to use a platform where financial incentives strongly discourage trolls, and the blockchain precludes removal of posts entirely.
While there is nothing wrong with money itself, and I don't hate it, capitalism is dependent on value being delivered in order to gain capital, and so many tricks are used to simulate value that real capitalism just seems to not even be possible.
Every crypto has the potential to deliver capital gains to the investors, and each seems to have a different use case. Steemit is the use case that seems to me to deliver the greatest capital appreciation potential to investors.
While I don't see any problem with authors that produce content focused purely on wealth accumulation being considered valuable, and upvoted accordingly (I hope this indicates that I am not jelly, as I do not post such content, and am not focused on wealth accumulation), it is a fact that gaming the rewards pool drains it of rewards that would inure to authors and curators that deliver such valuable content.
That decreases the rewards available to promote the creation of such valuable content, and strongly incentivizes folks to simply game the system, as you found to be true.
I reckon were the system such that content creation and curation were strongly incentivized over gaming the system, you would have no compunction about using those means of improving your profitability.
Since that would increase the value of the platform, and thus increase the value of Steem, you would see significant capital gains as a reward for your investment in Steem, which I also do not denigrate. Indeed, I strongly support the capital gains mechanism, as it is a true capitalism - as long as it isn't the result of less fair businesses, such as the defense industry promoting war and the profiting from selling weapons to nations through capital gains.
At the end of the day, you seem to be focused on making money, and that's ok by me, as long as the means you use to do so don't harm others. I see certain games and financial manipulation as strong negative impactors on the potential of the platform to grow, and to deliver on it's potential to create uncensored content and overcome the controls on capital used to devalue humanity, and concentrate wealth to the point where 85 people have more than 3.5 billion.
There is a point beyond which wealth accumulation is untenable, and I reckon the world has passed it. YMMV. Perhaps you simply want to be the 86th. I am not stating that you do want that, but that, if you are only focused on wealth with such a goal, I consider that evil.
People are worth more than money, and money is merely a veil behind which real wealth is concealed.