You know about sites like https://steemd.com/ right?
Anyone can go look at what anyone makes and it's all out in the open for everyone to see. You really think that like with 10 thousand active users and even more critics who would love to get dirt on steemit that this site would even still be running if it wasn't essentially as advertised, especially in regard to such a key aspect? I mean, I think those at steemit inc would pretty much be being sued and have legal action taken against them.

I run a contest here on steemit where I have to go pay people a percentage of the payout of certain posts and I've never noticed an issue. There's many other contests and games and apps and groups which rely on things adding up for them to continue to function. I think perhaps you're a little new to the platform, but steemit has been here for years now and there's a lot of really smart people who do programming or make apps or serve as witnesses and the list goes on, to imply they have all been hookwinked and are getting like 99% less than they were promised would be an incredible story if true.
Or a rare glitch happening to one account. If you want to prove something happened I suggest getting screenshots and use the website I included so you can show both the exact post and what the payout was for that post and let people see, and then if something really is wrong we can get some people to try to fix it. Cause, it's not happening to everyone. If anything it's a glitch. I just checked my numbers and they look fine. I got around how much I'm suppose to get, I'm not a math expert... Though I can do simple addition pretty well and I'm definitely not losing 99%, my numbers are about normal what I would expect and have been used to for years. Perhaps they are just slightly down from the new 20 steem rule from this recent hardfork, but I mean... It's really close, not anything like what you are saying. If it's a legit glitch lets fix it, but I really don't think this is some kind of huge conspiracy by steemit.

Oh and your point about the value of steem on here versus other places on the web like coinmarketcap is that steem uses an internal market for it's valuations to my knowledge, so the numbers you see here are going to be a bit different from what you see on coinmmarketcap. Could there be a conspiracy there to make it look more valuable than it is? Maybe, I doubt it. I think the internal community who trade and use steem regularly probably see a greater value than other sources further away from the "source". I guess time will tell what happens, but I believe in steemit longterm personally myself. I've been here for years and I haven't given up yet. :)