Hi @wakeupkitty, Sorry for only responding now, I have only just found some peace of mind.
I think the answer is in the post on the monthly Curators from Steemitblog:
For December, all seven teams will be free to vote on any types of posts as long as they are not plagiarized or created by AI. ... We want teams to very much look beyond communities. There are many good posts that are outside of any communities - just directly on people's personal blogs.
Teams should seek out these often neglected authors.

It doesn't mention any clubs, in fact, it asks to look for neglected solo users.

So the problem arises from the fact that there are communities that make clubs mandatory, even though it’s not written anywhere.

For example, in the Italian community, we don’t consider clubs for curation. Personally, I switch between club5050 and 75 for my personal growth because I want to increase my SP. But I do not demand that others do so, at most I can suggest it by explaining the reasons.

Everyone is free to do whatever they want, and since this platform is semi-decentralized, ideally, everyone should have the opportunity to participate in any activity regardless of clubs or burnsteem, and there shouldn’t be discrimination.

It’s clear that some people just take without ever doing a power-up, there are both the tricksters and those who use Steemit out of necessity to improve their economic situation.

Not everyone understands the value of investing in themselves by increasing their SP, and not everyone can afford to do a power-up because they need liquidity.

As my friend @damithudaya explains well, communities and their members in the past managed to become independent from external help through power-ups. It’s true that clubs were introduced to encourage people not to power down, otherwise, how would the whole Steemit ecosystem move forward?

Regarding creativity, it’s clear that participating in contests makes the posts somewhat uniform, but when there were no contests, it was very difficult to collect any Steem; you had to rely on a single whale you were lucky with.

Today, everyone has the chance to receive curation, from communities, from booming votes, from steemcurators. But it’s necessary to review how communities manage clubs and burnsteem, and how these suggestions, rather than rules, are perceived by users.
The result, regardless of their obligatoriness, is that many users participate in everything—clubs, burnsteem—in order to have a higher chance of receiving curation.

I know, unfortunately the system is not perfect, it needs improvement, and by discussing it, we can always do better.
But at least it’s something compared to when there was no support.
The important thing is to create and maintain a system where nothing is imposed and where people feel free to choose how they participate in Steemit.

It would be nice if there was a discussion about the real usefulness of burnsteem in the current state of things.

Thank you so much Kitty for always opening interesting discussions that help improve our approach to the platform.