"I say fix steem by correcting trending. Change downvote back to a flag. Call the upvote button a tip jar, and add a Reddit style up and downsort button which only serves to sort content. The upsort downsort buttons will accept all votes as equal, and allow only one vote per post and per IP address. The way it works: You read a post, and if you like it, you tip it and upsort it. If you don't like it, downsort. Upsorts and downsorts should be anonymous. I think something like this would cause people to fix trending on a daily basis. Also, people would have less reward envy with their in their secretly harbored expectations of a more equal outcome."

None of those things will actually better distribute Steem and create a vibrant market that will raise the price and create capital gains.

The ninjaminers are the only ones that have Steem in sufficient supply to do that, and they don't seem to have grasped the concept, or they're doing something else entirely that I am uninformed about. You're tuning a radio in a car about to plunge off a cliff hoping that will change the outcome. Enjoy the outro music.

Self votes are cancer in society. We see it is a terminal diagnosis from extant user retention. Here's how to cure it: make post and comment payouts limited, below the point at which it is worth financially manipulating the rewards mechanism to profiteer from it. While that can be improved by giving 15 Steem to new account holders instead of delegating it, that doesn't even matter either. End profiteering and Steem will grow. As long as profiteering is baked in, no matter what form it's baked in as, Steem is doomed to fail.