Forced curation is a completely broken mechanic and should be scrapped entirely. If someone wants to allow curation to occur on their content, that should be their decision to make and for how much.
At it's core, Steem is a tipping platform. Yes, a lot of people choose not to tip those who are trying to bring value to the platform. They instead choose to tip themselves or form a circle with a small group. This is normal. This is fine.
Literally nothing needs to change. If it were up to me I would make curation optional on a sliding scale and peg SBD to a dollar with Steem collateral just like the MakerDAO does it.
All we have to do is wait. The platform is working just fine. I've been blogging here over a year and I've made way more money here than I would have anywhere else. You might call it a screaming success from this perspective.
We are coming from a place where content creators are trying to sell their product after giving it away for free. Yeah, this obviously isn't the most profitable business model, but it is a good start and a way to get a foot in the door.
Going forward encryption will be used to secure ownership of digital content. Frontends will not allow users to access content unless the blockchain proves that they own it. None of this has anything to do with the foundations of the Steem blockchain and can be implemented in a permissionless manner by anyone in the world.
For example, imagine a game where anyone is allowed to create a skin that makes your character look different. No one will be allowed to use that skin unless they pay the creator x amount for it. Problem solved.
The same concept can be applied to blogging, but it won't be popular, because who is going to buy blogging content? Smarter to just give it away for free and hope someone is generous, especially if that blogger/vlogger doesn't have a big built-in audience.