Once the reward pool is distributed equally no matter the time invested into content creation and quality, it quickly becomes demoralizing for good content creators.
Finally someone rational... Steemit is way too "anarcho-socialistic" place
People come to Steemit to make money. If no money is earned by a person, even if their input time is small, the person will leave
Well, this is a problem of the way how Steemit was advertised: come here, earn money.
On the other hand, come to Facebook and connect with all your friends - for free.
Join Instagram and enjoy in mountains, girls, girls climbing mountains :D - for free!!!
This is why I think that we need to create something that is useful for people, rather in calling them to earn *(virtual money)
And that was precisely my point. If you advertise the money aspect too much, user retention is low and people just come and go. I think an interesting way in combating this would be to hide the rewards on posts. Maybe people would be satisfied with their "shit posts" that earn them 0.3 $ if they dont know that other people earn 100 $ on their shit posts just because they self-vote into oblivion and because they are whales.
P.S. I forgot to mention. STEEM must offer something to the everyday user besides money, as you suggest. That is why I like this @Crowdmind intiative. I think it is a good and easy way to onboard ordinary people into the cryptoworld and STEEM.
The blinding of the rewards to other users is an intriguing one, although I figure screen shots, authentic and otherwise, will complicate the efficacy of that potential change.
So many foundations are being laid by projects like @crowdmind so that as blockchain technology continues adoption, the integration of other useful projects will lead non-blogging consumers into the space from respective communities of the "offline world". The initial growth has provided opportunity for the novice and the cross-platform pro creators to see potential, and I think both have the capacity to bring in others users. Other platforms' blantant censorship is receiving attention from a rapidly-diversifying set of interest groups and society is strengthening their cries for transparency in our transactions.
My proposed solution is more of a bandaid and not an actual cure I think.
It might also be, that when we see better stability in cryptocurrencies with more sensible and organic growth instead of just senseless volatility, also more users will come to the platform to just do whatever, meaning they are not driven by profit so much anymore.