I think you are missing a trick.
- Everyone who participates will help build Steem platform into a successful platform ... for the founder(s) and users.
Everyone who participates gets given a share of the value of the platform. The more valuable the platform gets, the more valuable your individual holding gets. Steem will drop in value, but as the platform grows that should be offset by the increase in value the newcomers bring in (by adding content, curating etc).
As @dantheman stated, the founders are more than happy to take a tiny slice of a huge pie, rather than take a larger slice of a smaller pie. Which seems to make sense. Their focus right now is to increase value by building user numbers (no surprise there, eh?). :)