Don't get distracted by the rewards, they are just a trojan horse. The real goal is to bootstrap a currency and a new economy around it.
You probably right, so where are the tools for the new economy? Wouldnt drive the bootstrappong of Steem with marketplaces enabled using Steem as a primary coin? Wouldnt bootstrapping not be supported when getting the existing businesses to use Steemit/Steem as another promotional channel? But, commercial businesses have requirements, and they need to be fulfilled before they even consider to extend their communication and marketing channels with Steem/Steemit. I do not see anything that drives this! Nothing at all! While I know business segments that can be very interested in coming to Steemit, I also know that features at the backend are required on which I do not have any control over, so I (and others) can not start investing in the frontend features required to onboard these commercial businesses. The risks are simply to high! While when creating and executing a plan to onboard commercial businesses in a solid way, with co-operation of the various parties that needs to be involved, can drive the acceptance of Steem as a coin tremendously! As mentioned in another comment to this post: I do see a tremendous lack of (commercial) product management, a tremendous lack of winning propositions, and a tremendous lack of getting much more out of what is already being build.
Steemporium . It's a start.