Your idea of gift economy is a great mindset to maintain in the platform. We are after all writers and bloggers here in Steemit and producing great content should be the primary objective here. The rewards are secondary gains
Similar to any social media platform, we post content because it feels good, likes and upvotes sinply motivate you and allows you to gauge the depth of your content.
It's a win-win situation really. Hope everyone develops this kind of mindset