The flaws of Steemit were not all apparent to the developers, who are only human after all. Certainly they envisioned an imperfect distribution of rewards, intending for ~90% of rewards to inure to ~30% of the accounts.

Instead, their inability to perfectly predict human behaviour has resulted in ~99% of rewards inuring to ~1% of accounts. This was not their intention, and they clearly state that in the white paper.

"So you think only users who contribute valuable content are entitled to rewards?"

That is exactly the purpose of rewards, according to the white paper, which explains why the developers set things up the way they did.

Valuable content, and the curators that promote it, are rewarded, as the very and sole purpose of rewards on Steemit.

The rewards pool was not envisioned to be a form of dividend for investors, but rather they state in the white paper that the greater ability to curate good content, per the subjective and personal preferences of those with substantial holdings of SP, was the intended reward.

They specifically state that the perception of financial manipulation - and clearly vote selling is exaclty that - is an existential threat to Steemit.

Miners do not compete for issued coins. They compete to ISSUE the coins. Mining did occur on Steem, and is the source of the majority of Steem today. Those mined coins are intended to be distributed through curation.

Not through botnets, selfvoting, or vote selling.