In a sense, it's a race.

Right now by using the platform we are betting that the rate at which steem increases in value will outpace the rate at which the number of votes that we are likely to get on any individual post will decrease in number or value. (Assuming that one's use of this platform is dependent on concern about how much physical reward they receive.)

If the number of users increases such that the dilution of the voting pool by more participants decreases the value of an individual vote faster than the value of a smaller amount of steem increases in worth, we've made a bad bet.

It's certainly possible that Steemit is a bad bet. I'm willing to entertain the idea. Certainly, the overall trend in the value of steem has been largely upward over the last year but like the rest of the cryptocurrency market, it's ludicrously unstable and prone to sudden changes based on actions and behaviors which are not in any way related to those of the investors and stakeholders.

That would be a rational concern to have. But, as you note, it's unrelated to the actions of a few whales in any real sense, because the activity of having significant growth by actual small users is equally dispersive.

And it comes with all the philosophical problems that I pointed out earlier regarding the assumption of authority to tell someone else what they can do with their stake.

Yes, delegation is motivation – one way or another. In some ways we are currently very lucky that there is so much stagnant SP on the blockchain. (That is, accounts which literally do nothing but sit on a pile of vests.) That is all SP which could express the will of the holder to direct the reward pool – which they have a right to do. Should even more of the top 200 become highly active, because of the rate of falloff in the owned vest pool, the actual ability of anyone outside that group to direct any significant portion of the rewards pool would be effectively nil.

I find that kind of interesting. More for the question of "why haven't they done it already?" than anything else.