You made an important point here!
One of the problems with excessive vote buying is that people are able to completely skip community engagement.

When I joined Steem 18 months ago there was a completely different philosophy. Selfish behavior was not very well seen, and everybody was focussed on pushing the overall growth and sustainability of the community. Now I've maintained these values at least for my own blog, where I'm close to reaching 7,000 followers and around 27,000 Steem only by blogging every day now - and without having paid for only one vote :-) I have amazing conversations with people from all over the world that are often prolonged in the chatrooms then. Some of them have even become friends I meet in real life.

I would love to see that type of culture on the whole platform. But maybe that's a too romantic and unrealistic wish :-)

Compared to 2016, the culture of Steem has made a 180° turn. Self-voting and excessive vote buying have become respectable, while engagement and dedication have become rather secondary. Maybe it has to be like that, I don't know.

From my point of view it's hard to believe that a decreasing engagement in a social network will help to strengthen the eco-system in the long run. Buuuut, we can just wait and see what happens :-)

Welcome to steemit btw, just seen that you're one of the newer users! Hope you enjoy the ride so far.