I feel like we're always going to be on the early adopter curve until this place is mainstream. I am annoyed I didn't find this place in 2016 though, how different life would've been...
I know what it's like making posts and then not getting anywhere close to the kind of response you'd get on reddit for exactly the same post, it's discouraging. And I think the kind of people that stick around at the moment are networkers and the kind of people who are good at working out how to attract attention and make a name for themselves, as well as discovering communities and their niche. My niches for example are comedyopenmic and utopian.
As an avid Redditor who has more karma than SP, it is way more discouraging to get ignored on Reddit than it is on Steem. It might be cause you know how many users there are there that all decided to ignore you, lol. Here at least if you grow your stake or buy in you have a much higher chance at being heard just because of that than what you have to say.
Presciceley the benefits of a stake based system. Steem wouldn't be successful if there wasn't that heigherarchy. At the same time, I think you are right about people who come from other platforms seeing $0.01 next to their post and $10s or $100s next to posts they wouldn't deem valuable, and seeing that as a reflection of how this community value their work, which is why I'm slightly more excited about communities than I am about SMTs.
With manual curation (especially by whales and orcas) on the low, I think vote buying has become a necessity to keep some new users engaged, but sadly some people do tend to overestimate the value of their own work (entitlement, as you said) haha
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