I understand your point.

Let me ask you a few questions:

Say we're going to implement similar promotion system as it's currently existing on SCOT tribes here on Steemit, Steempeak and whatever frontend wants to support it.

This would make promotion via vote-selling redundant. On top of that, we'll decide that vote-selling is from then on prohibited and will be countered with downvotes.

What are we going to do about circle-voters/daily content producers - like this?

https://steemit.com/steempress/@slowwalker/ruinedtempleplaceofjeseoksatempleiniksancity-1zx5x3ganx

It's not bad quality, per se. On the contrary, but it creates the question whether this should be allowed on Steem.

Would we counter these with downvotes as step 2?

The last thing I want is for people to see Steem as a way for whales to only enrich themselves.

And what would be an alternative to these mechanisms, where people clearly want to profit with their stake? Only curation? Or are we going to build-in another mechanism for stakeholders to earn?

Last but not least, should Steem even allow general content? Or should this be on an SMT? The way I see Steem in the future, is as the base curreny for a whole ecosystem around social media. Some SMTs will allow shit-content and some won't. But that shouldn't matter to it's base currency, Steem.

If we have clear guidelines of what kind of contributions are allowed to receive shares of the reward-pool, then people can policy the reward pool themselves, including making contributions in that area.