I'm not sure if I'd say the design was based on utopia, but it was definitely assuming people would see the long term value in building up the ecosystem. Personally I think a lot of the behavior we see is short sighted and ultimately counter-productive.

Talking about regular curators, who are they? Are they really curating our posts or are they auto-voting them?

I get a mix. There is a decent amount of auto-votes but I auto-vote myself and see it as just supporting an author who has established a reputation for producing quality content. I am sure that if I started posting utter drivel then many of those auto-votes would fall away - and so they should.

I don't always have time to vote in real time but often I go back and read through my auto-votes long after I've voted on them. I guess it's another pragmatic lesser evil :)