Man, I just love how you dive into deep topics!

It's a very good question and highlights the fundamental tension between financial incentives and the health of the community/network. When in balance, the community will just feel right: good people and good content will find one another. 

I also agree that the financial incentives tend to win out over quality content. While I love Steemit,  I currently value the community, while the content lags far behind -- most of my reading is done elsewhere.  I rarely find posts that interest me on the main trending page. Then again, no site or network can be all things to all people all the time. So I'm extremely happy with the community aspect.

I tend to believe that if more and more people join Steemit, the pie simply will grow bigger and the old timers will grow more and more irrelevant. Will all the newcomers care about the same things the old timers care about? Maybe,  but probably not. More likely the old timers will bemoan all the new folks who have different interests and values.

And if the old timers do have an unfair advantage, Steemit will simply become and artifact and people will spend their time where they're appreciated.

But I don't think that will happen. I think that the community and network will evolve together and the necessary tweaks will happen along the way. If we iterate on the current model, I think we'll discover how far we can get in balancing the tension of $$$ and quality.

It will be interesting to see what emerges as quality, since so much of it is in the eye of the beholder. I know a lot of people who prefer sensationalist news to truth. 

Can't wait to find out!