Hi cloudbuster. All the things you said is true. I think am the only one making the observation. Most posts are been upvoted not because of the merit of the content but rather on selfish interest. I think this will corrupt the system of producing quality content. Thanks for making your opinion known publicly. I believe others too are also observing that too. Thanks. You are super awesome. I appreciates the guts and courage.

I have the same feeling, it looks like you have to develop a strategy that is founded on everything except quality content, what the platform was intended for.  That said I'm 100% that the development team is looking at improving this.

ofcourse if all earning options was removed people (me included) would stop using this site.

steemit is uniqe because it allows new bloogers t oget some kind of revenue stream even when they start out (on IG Facebook or youtube only about top 10% actually make a decent amount of money.

the system is obviously not perfect and can be abused. The witness program are there to hopefully eliminate the word offenders.

yes the system is flawed but it is way better for people like me that does not have a large following base or have any sorts of conections. 

it pritey much allows us to make a bit of money while growing and giving our opinions. 

i believe that steemit will evolve with the people using it and that's why i am happy that i am starting now. it could be a really bright future for all of us using this platform and all the other platforms that uses the steemit buisness model.

How can we solve this? (pardon my english)
I recognized a problem with how we promote steemit, we tend to highlight one thing only which is the money aspect. Im currently promoting steemit in a different way to prove that we can invite people to join without the money aspect. 

What if we hide the rewards from a post? Sometimes people dont read the post they just upvote it cos it has high reward hence all other high quality posts that dont have any upvote wont be recognized. 

What if all posts that paid bots goes to "promotion tab" that way its clear who used bots and who didnt. Hot and trending tab will be full of hq posts. 

Thank you for posting this @cloudbuster! new follower here

What you are saying is so brave but that is the reality that exists now @cloudbuster. Although I just joined here and still a beginner but because I often read the post I found a reality that is identical to what you are talking about.
Cause in steemit promises a coveted income, all the way will be done to achieve the goal, including by begging the vote to others. It would be different if people vote because it is a good quality post, it is very reasonable and it should be.
A few days ago I wrote an article in Indonesian with a marginalized steemian title ( https://busy.org/@lamkote/steemian-yang-terpinggirkan ). a little more I flicked some of what you say now. Hopefully in the future we will become a better person. sorry for my bad english.

You raise some valid points. To summarise; the system can be abused, and self-moderating is difficult because people fear the backlash of larger accounts.

However, I take a much more positive outlook of the platform. Behind the noise of selfishness and spam, there is a great core community creating top quality content and helping each other to better themselves.

I think as the platform grows, something will need to be done about some of the major issues. Spam, in particular, is quite an annoyance. My technique as a minnow is to simply ignore all spam and flag any worthless comments on my posts. If they're not earning, they will eventually give up.  That's the hope, anyway.