You covered a lot! Spot on for your concerns. Even as a noob, I see it too.
Okay, you wanted input and a discussion: Here are my thoughts of the 3 problems you outlined.

• Tragedy of the Commons. I don’t see it as selfish or selfless (communal) behavior. I see it as productive or destructive (ie. Good or bad) for the Steemit Community. I see anyone who upvotes a post they find interesting as a good thing, regardless if they are receiving a reward. I see anyone who is manipulating the system so they are rewarded unfairly to the detriment of quality content, treatment of steemians (including the minnows), or undermining the value of legitimate inputs as caustic.

I do believe many of these problems can be solved. The peer-review community and collective voting aspects are huge assets if employed correctly. But currently they are not. A million new minnows can outweigh a whale. Minnows don’t have any weight or reward for curation. Down-votes are not tied to expertise or authority. There are some problems which can be solved.

I wrote up a post with some of my crazy ideas Steemit Proposal for Developer and Community Evaluation https://steemit.com/steemit/@mrosenquist/steemit-proposal-for-developer-and-community-evaluation

• Rules of Steemit. Without rules society de-evolves into chaos….then a strange thing happens. It tends to reinvent itself where individuals and groups begin to organize and defend themselves. This then forms a governing system and norms are established. I think the same thing is happening to Steemit. We are in the Wild West at the moment. The community is looking after itself and in the process establishing boundaries which must be tested. Plagerism a problem? Create @cheetah (good kitty). People not following the tagging rules, downvote. Some of these rules will be tested, debated, and even abolished. Eventually, if @Dan and @Ned don’t establish a formal set of laws, the members will create informal ones with creative consequences. BUT the key here is each person must have a voice. See my comments above about the need for every minnow to have some influence and reward for their curation work.

• Transparency. I am on the fence about this one. To be transparent (yes, I did that) I do not have sufficient knowledge of the challenges, opportunities, and risks to form a respectable opinion. So I will do the noble thing and just remain quiet until such time I can contribute something worthwhile.