Sorry, but I have no idea to which "Standardized References List" you are referring.

Due to the large amount of content, absent any smart recommended algorithm, the expected value of any search within the time/interest/resources budget of the user is most likely to be below the benefit of a typical search. The typical search by sampling will draw a blank.

How do you define "benefit"? What exactly do you mean by "typical search"?

Anyway: I think manual search is very useful to find articles which would be completely overlooked from automated upvoting methods.
For example under the #introduceyourself hashtag are so many posts with rewards lower than 10 cents (even if you only consider the more elaborated ones) that I think the platform would benefit a lot if we experienced users would sacrifice some of our precious time reading, commenting and upvoting some them. If everybody only upvoted a few posts it would already help.

So users bookmark 1st, 2nd, 3rd, consistent creators and read that, if anything at all.

I can only say that I have a list of more than 100 users which I try to check regularly. Unfortunately these days I am rather busy so that the diversity of my upvotes was somewhat decreasing recently, but I hope to change that again soon.

Daily content of high quality (which is defined subjectively but consistently) is needed for market position to be obtained. But the reward for daily content production is too low, combined with many other issues.

Yes, the rewards for many not so well known users are very low.
Apart form that anyway I wouldn't suggest to create content daily. Just create something if you have a good idea or some interesting thoughts to share, if you just have made some beautiful photos or are coming back from a journey. I think it is a mistake to force oneself to write even if there is nothing to say for the moment (but OK, I am getting somewhat off-topic now).

For most users, they have nothing to read or write that makes permanent archiving significant.

I doubt that. I think people just have to learn again to put some effort in writing. There are so many options: one can write about a trip, about a restaurant, about ones cooking, about sports, about politics, about relationships, ..., ... One doesn't need to be a scientist, a brilliant programmer or a rock star to be able to write something interesting. Also 'normal' people often may have much more to say than they are thinking themselves ... I guess facebook, twitter & Co. are to blame that many people 'forgot' how it feels to write texts which are longer than one sentence. :)

Yet account creation for their friends, unless they make accounts, takes weeks. Their friends lose interest and don't show. Without their friends, they lose interest and leave ...

That's indeed a big problem. It should be possible in future to open and use a Steemit account instantly.