What has value and what we place our wealth into are too often two very different things.

And that is another problem. Steemit is like a prophet preaching peace with a gun in hand. If not for curation, and certain well meaning individuals who look for quality content to upvote, the quality content that steemit wants to pride itself for will be mainly hidden. After upvotes can be bought for any post, no matter how trashy it may seem. Votes can be exchanged, votes can be bidded for. With all these, what is the motivation to write well?

Value hides behind wealth in the scheme of things and those with the wealth, not those who write well, are valued here. At the end of the day, it is all about making money; The rules are not sacrosanct. They have been bent and no one is bothered. But it's open-source so what the hell?