Well, I am not in the position to solve it, but I am 100% sure that those problems are not unsolvable. It is obvious, even from the newbie perspective, that if you want to promote quality content rank should have more power, maybe even more than steem power. It will make the inequality between the rich and the poor less influential, which even in real life is one of the main goals of each government. Here, the equality is only deepening with botting.

I'm not in a position to solve the problem because I have very little data, but here's, now I'm thinking of the system as at auction to make better use of the promotion tab and kill botting. The user, instead of using bots, could determine a deposit guaranteeing the quality of the post. If he succeeds to get upvoted for that amount that he has set up then keeps the earnings and the caution, if he does not succeed, he will lose everything (or just caution, cant calculate it now). Highest amount will have the highest visibility. I do not know if it is feasible but it is one of the ideas that came to mind after a few minutes of thinking. People who deal with it will make better ideas for sure if they really want.

The point is that at this moment the focus is on the economy, which is oversized, so steemit looks like a greedy man/bot without a soul, at least to newbies. The awareness that a change is needed in that direction would be a major step, and the people working on the project are smart enough to put it into practice. If they were not smart, they would not come this far.