I have a partial solution to the problem. Our reputations are somewhat hard to game but people utilizing upvote bots accelerated their reputations but it cost a lot of money. Also a certain amount of unique voting over the last 6 months is hard to fake as well for an account.

It is also impossible to fake having at least 500 or 1000 SP and spreading that amount to a ton of accounts won't be able to fool the right system that takes in the other criteria either.

So here is what I feel needs to be done. A new community is created either with SMTs or just a cloned chain of this or something built on EOS and everyone on here who meets the criteria gets air dropped an equal amount. That way everyone engaging feels like they have a solid vested interest in the platform and a decent influence over the rewards pool.

I honestly look at STEEM as more of a testnet at this point. Overtime we are seeing the outcome of certain decisions and a platform that skips the mistakes and has a more fair launch has a good chance to grab hold.