Even if it crashes, you don't get paid in steem but in steem power, or in steem power and SBD. SBD is pegged to 1$ worth of steem, ...
It's better to get paid in steem than being paid steem power, because you can immediately sell your steem. It takes three months to sell your Steem Power completely.
If the price of Steem crashes, the price of Steem Power and SBD crashes as well.
SBD stands for Steem Backed Dollars. The peg will only work as long as the underlying Steem, Steem Power have any value.
If Steem, Steem Power crashes, Steemit founders won't be able to print USD to pay the SBD holders. Nor will anyone else accept SBD as money.
If Steem prices go down, the author and curator rewards will go down as well.
The amount of my Steem Power didn't change, but back in the day one upvote of mine with 85%+ voting power used to be worth $0.02, but now it's worth $0.01, due to the value of Steem decreasing.
steemit was meant to have high utilization and not as an speculative object for investors
At the end of the day, if something has high utilization, speculating investors will flock to it. If you can't find investors or other means of financing your business, then your business will have a problem.