Well, if Hive would reach the 5 dollar mark it would be quiet impressive. But I must confess that Hive community has a lot to grow. Just like you said:
If this past is anything to go by, there would be a huge amount of social volatility, as a million accounts get created, plagiarists and shitposters run rampant, selfvoters, scam and another million alts hit the post button.
Hive has the potential to grow, and all we have to do is to continue to post original content, and giving value, true value in form of a token. When Hive surpasses the dollar value, I think that the grow would be greater from that point further. When many users are "forced" to exchange hive for having some dollars in their pockets to fulfill basic live purchases, or by continuous exchanging for other tokens, without creating a true valuable one, would be much harder. But we got to have faith that bad times would end... someday, right?