Somebody needs to build an app on top of Steem where the economics of the internal token or coin are more aligned with community building. The Steem economic system is a macroeconomy that is good at producing and distributing coins based on activity that is not necessarily social. Websites such as steemhunt and steemstem, and possibly others I have not seen, are examples of how to do this.
Steem's macroeconomy is not perfect but actually works fine, but it is like expecting your bank to fund a social club - you can, of course, use your bank to fund one :-)
Steem is a framework to build things on. It isn't 'fair', but then neither is life or the capitalist system. What we do have is freedom and that has value.
I don't pretend to understand all the economics, but the balance could shift with SMTs/tokens and if there were far more users with some SP. I'm interested to see where it goes.
I'm not sure encoding "fairness" would work anyway, but having enough feedback loops that attenuate behaviour that is damaging to the chain is entirely feasible. Most people obey their laws most of the time not due to a sense of fairness but a fear of retribution; if encoded, that's just a negative feedback loop.
As you say, Steem is a framework, and more than SMTs I hope that SCOT fulfills its promise of being a more flexible tool so that some projects will "reframe" the rules so that their communities can thrive with little or no interference from the underlying blockchain economy.
I'm also not saying it will be easy - but it's worth another experiment in crypto-economics.
There are also some non-economic social issues, such as the ease of keeping in touch with friends, but this article was mainly about financial issues.
People will work around algorithms. It's up to people to determine where rewards go. Flagging/downvoting is part of that, but many people will just not do it and in some cases you have to fear big retaliation. Another aspect of the freedom of Steem.