Steemit was established with author rewards and curation rewards.
Author rewards = rewarding authors
Curation rewards = rewarding curators who dig and find great content.
That's not what's happening now.
Author rewards were hijacked by the pay4vote bots. Author's mostly don't get the rewards, they use the bots to get more exposure for their posts.
Curation rewards were hijacked by the voting bots that vote for specific authors without reading and verifying that its quality content.
So steemit just doesn't stand up to it goals I made a proposal that you can read here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/will-steem-succeed-or-commit-suicide
Also read what dan has to say on voting bots: https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/top-posts-on-steemit-one-year-ago-today-2-aug-14-16-top-author-payout-usd8589-to-dogcoin-creator