All of these arguments ignore the fact that a healthy social network is the best route to ROI for investors.

"...after rewarding content creators over $70m by now..."

is extremely disingenuous, because the vast majority of those author rewards were part of some scheme or another that either featured self votes or circle jerks.

The fact is that focusing on ROI and considering cash king is killing the social network.

Potato posts are a symptom of the disease of rapine. ROI is not the purpose of social networking, and trying to design Steem to produce ROI first reduces it's value to society for mere lunch money for whales.

Put the horse in front of the cart. Content imbues Steem with value, and ROI can dramatically result from that - but only if investors actually invest in the social network, rather than simply seek to extract returns from it.

Eliminate curation rewards completely. This focuses ROI on capital gains completely, rather than financial manipulation which so degrades the social network. The FAANGs reveal that social media is the most profitable business model extant, but only if the society is the horse pulling the cart.

Do that and all this crap haggling over upvote timing, burning tokens, and taxing creators to fund business lunches for investors vanishes, allowing society to interact naturally and produce extremely valuable networking. Focusing on extracting Steem into the wallets of whales kills the social network.

Investors should be building the network and looking for capital gains that result from building something of value to society. Society is the source of value, and financial returns aren't the purpose of society. Financial returns are a product of society that will produce capital gains, if the whales get their financial interests out of the way of growing Steem social media.