I see your point, come to think of it, the inflation argument is fairly weak since it hasn't inflated by 10X and it won't for many years or whatever.

RC makes sense to a certain point, but it doesn't make sense the way it is set up now. New accounts should get a lot more RC, let's say enough for 500 or so interactions a day provided their rep isn't headed down the drain. Maybe even increase it as they do a tutorial or something. In anycase, people do start off with a purpose and it limits them severely. They can be taught to 'behave' after they misbehave. It's shouldn't have been implimented without RC sharing and SMTs at the very least. It seems like they pushed the wrong things forward at the wrong time. Now HF21 may also be poorly timed as well.
In any case, I do think that some sort of floor has been reached however it will be very difficult to turn around the reputation of this place. It may take one or two spin off communities before it is possible.
There is just too much crap making a ton of money and all the big stake holders just vote for themselves or people who endless post about steem which has 0 interest to people who don't own steem.
I remember when I first came here, it was god awful amateur musicians, artists students and people writing about how awesome Steem and EOS were who made all the money. Also, I didn't understand vote selling or buying then, so I would see weird content getting hundreds and even thousands of dollars worth of random votes and just wondering what the hell is this? It's barely changed.