Very well said. I had similar thoughts, even though I've spent only few hours here.
My issue begins with seeing a dollar sign, which is associated with monetary value in my brain. So there will -probably- always be a more important parameter of motivation than creativity, inspiration or unfortunately even originality.
For example, so far I love the content in Medium. I feel like the biggest push there is to get more people to read and interact with your content. The moment a dollar sign is added to next to the number of engagement, whether it's a comment, a like or a retweet, that automatically changes the most important aspect of posting/creating content. At least, for some or most.
But, then again, we are here for a reason to see if it would actually work. Myspace was a very big social network, but it definitely wasn't the biggest and it's completely obsolete now. So steemit actually does not have to work, but definitely has the potential to spark the idea that could. And that's why I'm here.