Lowsec is broken

This is no secret.
Lowsec stopped being profitable region a long time ago. These days, lowsec is only used by Factional Warfare participants, pirates, and people trying to get to nullsec. There is no incentive for the highsec carebear to leave his sanctuary. So, he does not. Because of rumours that as soon as you enter lowsec you will be destroyed, many people in highsec have never entered lowsec, nullsec or wormhole space. 

Whats wrong?
Surely a region of space that is supposed to be less secure than highsec should offer greater rewards that highsec. But sadly, this is not true. The only activity that is more profitable in lowsec than it is in highsec is ratting, yet ratting in nullsec is safer than lowsec. In short, this is summarised with the classic Eve saying "Risk (should) equal reward)", this isn't true in lowsec due to the fact you can make the same money running L4's or incursions as you can in Highsec but it is so much safer there.
You will occasionally find the lost new player who has heard that lowsec ores are more valuble than highsec ones, but this simply isn't true now. The recent price spice of low-end minerals following the drone alloy changes mean that the supply of low end minerals not found in lowsec ores has decreased (below sustainable levels) and consequently their price has gone up. However, the supply for middle-high end ores was unaffected, and their prices remained similar. This means Veldspar is now more profitable than pretty much all lowsec ores.

But what about Faction War?
It's true that the Inferno changes to Faction War increased the activity of FW lowsec and FW on the whole, but most of these were complex farmers who strived to make as much LP as possible before an "LP dump", where a faction would rush to flip systems and pour LP into their infrastructure hubs. However, PVP was not rewarded enough and the primary purpose of it became to get LPs, rather than PVP. This didn't really improve lowsec on the whole since the system was being exploited by week old alts.The system has been changed now so LP dumps do not work in the same way, somwhat restoring the focus of FW to PvP.

Pirates can still make a living
Pirates aren't really true pirates anymore, in comparison to what the job used to mean. These days, all they have to prey on are the lost new players, transports to nullsec, Factional Warfare participants (many of which are pirates themselves) and other pirates. The only time I've tried to be a pirate was two years ago, so I'm probley not as well qualified to speak on this as I am the other topics, but nonetheless in my time in lowsec it was one trend I noticed. All that is needed to fix this is more targets, which will cause piracy to thrive.

What can be done to fix it?
The solution to this is simple, but CCP would never authorise it. Moving services that are now in highsec, for example manufacturing slots, research slots and level 4 missions to lowsec would surely drive the highsec dwellers from their homes, restoring traffic and encouraging more piracy. A thing that CCP would be more likely to do would be to add new content to lowsec, such as they did with Factional Warfare. I heard rumours of a 'ring mining' feature that would use stationary stations to mine or something along those lines around six months ago, but this seems to have been nothing more than a rumour. Dust 514 promises to inject some excitement into FW when it is fully released, with more features and more people to shoot. Only time will tell.

Another note, if you're a new player reading this I encourage you to go out into low/nullsec and try looking for a fight. It's near certain you'll explode, but hopefully you'll have a fun time doing it. If you're looking for an income from lowsec, as I said the only sensible profitable thing to do in lowsec is either to rat or do faction war, both of which are easily accessible to new players. You may also have heard rumours that every lowsec gate is camped, but this is simply untrue, only the busiest highsec->lowsec gates are camped. Fly safe.