Great presentation!
Just a quick point - More STEEM isn't produced as more content is created, it's kinda fixed I think. So ultimately, more content creators will see less rewards as it's spread thinner.
The upside is with more people the price of STEEM should naturally go up so therefore, the actual monetary value will still be the same.
Unfortunately, if big investors come in and just sell their votes, then it'll start to resemble bitconnect, especially if Steemit becomes known as an investment platform.
And you're right, the whales absolutely have the power to control this, but while there are idle whale accounts staying out of the action, too much is being done by too few.
Right now the bull has a rope around his neck, but if we let go of this rope, it'll cause an uncontrollable stampede.
If you take a look at the Youtube influencers for bitconnect, some have already turned their attention to Steemit.
https://www.steemithelp.net/new-page-3/
I had read on here that Steem is "mined" by creating new content. So that's why I said that. I don't think it's the number of users that would cause returns to diminish but how those rewards were allocated. I had also read somewhere that there isn't a pre-determined amount of Steem and that more is created daily. The issue I was bringing up is that whales who produce no content are therefore "raping" the Steem pool from all the minnows who are creating by just upvoting each other.
The steem economic model is infeasible and unattractive on too many dimensions to be a serious contender in its current incarnation and with the current group of shareholders. It's actually a ponzi scheme built on top of another ponzi scheme, which is current crypto price valuations. The way the pool is split encourages people to do anything but tell other people about steemit, as that just creates more competition. The prices attached to both currencies used here are fantasy numbers pushed ever higher by a combination of fraudulent money, fraudulent trades, and crooked exchanges. Once Tether implodes people will discover what speculators really value sbds and steem at, and steemit won't keep many, if any, users.