I like both you and @kevinwong, maybe that is just because of my slight affection for Asians. I completely agree that the current model is not working, this place is festering of late and something needs to be done. A 50/50 split might be the best way to accomplish this.
However going off of your post, you have only looked at the economic model and neglected the social aspect of the platform. Your notions would be accurate if this were a purely economic platform, but there is much more to it than just that. It's the same reason billions of people are on Facebook without receiving a penny. The social aspect really should not be overlooked.
The social aspect is very powerful, but when it is smothered by self votes and the "me over everything" attitude, it gets drowned out.
If this was purely about money than I never would have stood up to clowns like bernie sanders knowing full well it would result in the loss of potential steem earnings. The same goes for many of the communities and votes that take place, people want to feel connection and Steem has done this in the past.
There is a lot to untangle with the current economic model but I think its important to understand there is much more than just the economic part to it.
The economy has to work first. Otherwise to quote @dana-edwards elsewhere in this thread, "The ship sinks".
There are many different ways to work on social aspects, and many different sorts of social aspects that can find a niche. Facebook is very different from Twitter which is very different from Reddit which is very different from Steemit (which indeed may be very different from some future Steemit). These can all work.
Getting the economy to work is the first priority.
The economy needs to work, but it can be viewed in isolation without looking at the intrinsic value the platform creates. Steemit is more than just an economic system, what exactly that is, is up for interpretation. It is the first of its kind and the driving force for people to come to the platform is the idea of the economic incentive, but it is not necessarily the reason they stay, especially when seeing the incentives decrease as substantially as they have in 2018. The economy definitely needs amending, but so do many other aspects of this ecosystem
The economy still needs to work or the ship just sinks, at some point literally people can't afford to run the servers (not cheap), etc. It doesn't really matter what the motivations or intrinsic values are. The numbers need to work. (I'm not claiming we are anywhere near the point where servers would be turned off. We're not. But keeping tho ship afloat at a basic level is still always a consideration that trumps others.)