I'm glad you said "I'd gladly sacrifice my reputation points and future earnings in order to help clean things up for everyone else and give Steemit a better chance for mass adoption and success."
I have been biting my tongue about a lot of things on here and unfortunately for guys like me the payouts have been extremely frustrating. Only an extremely stubborn person would still be on here working for $0.50 / hour. Steemit has hemoraged so many good content creators it isn't even funny. Eventually there won't be any new people who have the crypto skills and exchange accounts to join this platform. Steemit needed us to create content and help create a bridge for people outside the crypto world. By upvoting sock puppet accounts everyday they have alienated a very important demographic off of this platform. Would anyone really expect a guy like me to spend my time creating on here when I can spend 5 hours on a post and not even be able to buy a candy bar with the payout?