I really like your idea of applying marginal utility to Steemit. The way I think of it is the marginal utility of an interaction with Steemit. That interaction will be different if you are an SP hodler, a creator, a curator, an app developer, a witness ... And yet, if we think about what's essential in the long run -- it's the greatest good for the for the people demanding and creating demand for SP and SBD. In the end, the underlying currency is inextricable from an measurement of utility around here.

I see the criticisms of the reward pool, the concentration of Steem from the premine, and whales that game the system for their own benefit at the expense of others. These chip away at marginal utility of interaction for creators and curators, but there is an even bigger issue (for me) that seems relatively easy to solve:

Posts are worthless and invisible after 7 days

I just did a write up about this yesterday, 7 Days to $0. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me -- and the more I don't understand why people don't discuss this as a problem. This is solvable, whereas the wealth concentration will take more time (if it can even be solved).

When I think about people spending a lot of time and research to produce a post that is valuable a year later -- 7 days is ridiculous.

When I think about a curator sifting through the piles of posts -- 7 days is ridiculous. When was the last time a curator outside of Steemit limited themselves to 7 days? You don't find gems when you constrain yourself to an arbitrarily short time frame. Curating with a 7-day limit isn't curating, it's slave labor.

• 7 days makes people post frequent, shallow content.
• 7 days makes curators concentrate on what's recent and ignore everything else.
• After 7 days -- upvotes = $0, no resteems. The post is financially dead and effectively invisible to readers & curators.

You're right, we can only consume so much -- especially so in 7 days. However, expand that time frame and we can do a lot more. For example, I was active here for several months before I found you. I've enjoyed reading your posts. I've gone back and read older posts, posts older than 7 days, older than a month -- CRAZY, right?! And I gained tremendous value from reading them. My only options are to send cash directly to you or encourage people to follow you. My upvote is worthless (beyond emotional support), I can't resteem your post. Now imagine that with your next 5,000 new followers. It adds up, especially across the entire network of minnows who sometimes posted their best stuff first.

Combine this 7 Days to $0 with extremely poor discoverability on the Steemit website, and I argue that you can't make older posts any more worthless.

For both creators and curators, especially minnows, the marginal utility of an interaction is extremely low. In the end with this marginal utility for all these people being low, they have very little invested in staying here. When the next big thing comes along, they'll leave. Steemit has 1st mover advantage, but it is still relatively easy to replicate. And if the financial rewards are more fair elsewhere and people can also earn income on older content (as a creator and curator), people will cash out and leave.

And when people leave, the demand for Steem currency drops, price drops, whales care, Steemit Inc cares. So in the end, probably the healthiest thing for all of us is a competitor to Steem.