I agree with you on DASH being great tech and a great community too! It is solid! There is plenty of room in the space for other amazing things such as Steem, too, of course.
People (who are not crypto people mind you) have an incentive to lock away their capital into steempower to be able to support bootstrapping the network. I see DASH people here, who have a very good community for marketing their tech and community to the world so they feel how addictive and awesome the platform is--and that is extremely valuable on its own merit. I also see DASH working with BitShares btw, in this ICO. So don't worry there is plenty of room for all of these good cryptos. But let's face it--Steem is bringing people who have never touched crypto. Can you really say that if our community supports it like DASHs community supports DASH, that Steem wouldn't continue to grow perpetually? It destroys facebook, twitter, medium and other social networks if for no other reason than its sheer scalability and censorship resistance. That isn't even talking about the economic aspect.
As for the problem you see with the dollar...once again I agree (sadly because I'm and American who gets to watch this ridiculousness), but who is saying there cannot be other kinds of assets backed by steem? SBGOLD would be nice wouldn't it? Or SBDASH to track the value of Gold and DASH in your savings (I'm more of a silver freak that gold though)? And lets face it maybe you later will be able to hold those steembacked assets against SBD since it is obvious the USD is just the best of the worst currencies--at least for the time being.
As for the inflation, if 100% of steem were to be locked in steempower, the maximum actual inflation is around 10%. That is less than bitcoin. Last time I checked something like 97.6% was locked in steempower and the trend was staying at that point as people earn and power up.
I greatly appreciate your input and am happy you enjoyed the hangout! Feel free to join us and answer questions about DASH anytime you want :)
Here is the link if you want to get some of your community together to represent!
https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@officialfuzzy/guest-signups-beyond-bitcoin-hangout-170-8-26-16-rsvp-to-friday-s-hangout-ask-q-s-suggest-topics-or-promote-your-favorite
Thanks @officialfuzzy; sometime you can host a show and interview me about my book and we'll also talk Dash!