Addressing the centralized Steem distribution is phase 2 or 3 in my #fight4steem mental roadmap. Originally that massive stake Steemit got was supposed to be dispersed to new users as part of the account creation process until it was gone, but they changed course and started using temporary SP delegation instead of permanent distribution to launch new accounts. That's a major red flag.

SBDs are certainly broken, and it could make sense to just remove them completely to reduce confusion. Pegged assets can work (as demonstrated on BitShares), just not unconditionally. SBDs were cloned from BitShares but they altered the model to allow them to be issued by the network rather than by individuals, and in doing that they broke the economics of the pegging mechanism. On BitShares the pegged assets are collateralized with BTS provided by individual private investors who effectively want to short sell the peg's target asset. The minimum collateral ratio thus defines the maximum drop in the BTS price that the asset can be guaranteed to protect against. It's likely to protect against larger drops as new investors buy out positions and recollateralize them, but it can't be guaranteed. Steem is targeting average social media users rather than finance and economics geeks, so they tried to dumb down the model and make it more accessible and killed it.