With almost a half of a year under my belt, I have learned a lot about how steemit works. I realize I still have many things to learn in the future as well. But here are some observations of what I've been able to glean from my time here. These observations are meant to be constructive and helpful.
Most people seem to think there are set "rules" to follow, but there aren't many. As one witness told me recently, it is the person with the most SP that determines what is right. Is it any wonder why we have so much new user churn?
Are the bots good? Is self voting a bad thing? Should people delegate to bots that allow spam to be upvoted? Who determines spam? If bid bots aren't acceptable, why do the owners of the system (the whales with lots of SP) provide them with SP? And if bid bots are perfectly acceptable, then obviously the users of those bots should be allowed to use them to upvote "good" content. Yet many shun bot votes on both posts and comments.
So why are these issues even in dispute? Why do people get flagged for doing things that are supported by the whales that "own" the system? If someone uses bots to thrust them into trending, is it the user, the bot owner, or the delegator that should pay the penalty in the event it is "deemed" unacceptable? And who is charged with carrying out that penalty, is it the biggest bully?
Even when a cause is easily able to be judged as heroic (like the flagging wars led by 
A Simple Solution To Solve Many Problems
Background Analogy - Who Decides?
In the real world, some public companies rig their capital structure to give different voting value to the entrenched players at the expense of the little guy who really doesn't have much influence. They do this by the creation of different classes of common stock (like A shares and B shares). Everything is the same for each shareholder except the weight of the vote. It is not uncommon for the A shares to vote many multiples more than the B shares. The A guys can sell their large stakes (ie. monetize it, or get money for their shares), yet they still keep the say so over how things are controlled at the corporation.
As a financial market professional with 33 years of experience, I can assure you that this practice is a sign that the controllers want it both ways. They want to get the investors' capital, but they also want to maintain their overall control of the business entity. Many investors simply don't mind, and they give away their control and money to people that are happy to take it from them. But make no mistake, these corporations perpetually under-perform consistently.
Delegation Of Steem Power Should Also Transfer To Witness Voting
Just like with the stock market, steemit has people that want to have control, but also want the financial benefit that comes with the SP. There are many people that have large amounts of steem power that are not engaged in the day to day activity (absentee owners). They simply sell their votes to others and receive even more SP in the process. But they keep the voting power of their SP for witness votes, thus they still decide who makes the rules. Nice to have it both ways, huh?
So when it comes to who is voting for witnesses, the literally "silent majority" of SP holders wield massive weight. Is it any wonder what kind of witnesses these guys would want? What do you think would happen if the witnesses said, "no more bid-bots" or place heavier restrictions on the bot owners that reduce usage? Face it, the bot owners are the middlemen of the system. Most of the big top 20 witnesses exist to facilitate the idle owners' "vote selling" to the people that play the bots.
My Simple Proposal - The Account That Votes The SP Also Votes For Witnesses
What I would like to see is the people who "vote" the SP be the ones that also "vote" for the witnesses. This would force the people that really use the system daily to be the ones that make the rules. It would give the active users of the SP the democratic voice. It would also make the witness voters more aware of what is going on and pay attention to the current issues.
I have nothing against people lending out their SP. I have nothing against the bot owners that act as a middleman and collect a fee by providing a service to both buyers and sellers. I have nothing against people using the bots to make money since that is allowed in a free market system. In fact I have leased SP and used bots myself.
But what I would like to see engaged ownership. Right now ownership leases their SP, votes for the witnesses that will keep status quo, and then collects their big dividends in the form of more SP (ie disengaged). What I am proposing is that if that ownership gets "rented" to others through leases, then the witness voting rights should also go to those that leased it. In this way, the witness votes will be cast according to what serves the accounts "using the SP". That will put the people with the SP in the spot of having to 1) either engage the community or 2) change the way they delegate (or to whom). No longer would the market be flooded with SP for leases that go to the highest bidder, but instead those large SP holders would have to use it actively or in conjunction with others that will carry out their wishes.
My goal is not to end the bots or stop the process. My goal is to see the democratic process work by giving the power to make the rules to those that are using that power on a daily basis. In other words, absentee ownership is fine, just make sure the people that are using the voting power on a daily basis are the ones who set the rules of what works best.
This platform has many awesome design benefits, but this is one that I think should change. By letting the absent owners sell their economic interest but keep their ability to vote for witnesses, it has enabled people that have little to no idea what is happening on a daily basis to neglect the formation and development at a crucial stage in the evolution of Steemit at a critical time. Steemit will face many new competitors in the future and the sooner this fix happens the faster we can adapt to meet that competition.