The original question wasn't answered; for now, though Steem can rely solely on user growth similar to early social media. Once it hits its peak, like social media, growth won't be enough and it will have to look at monetization. The risk I some of us are taking with steem power is that Steem monetizes this platform before the user growth tapers; otherwise, it may be like Twitter, which procrastinated too long and is in trouble.

Still, its economic model is not sustainable without infinite user growth, so everyone has been forewarned and the risk as you say is just a loss of time if a person only takes the risk of writing media.

We’re brash. We keep weird hours. We’re intense. We get wrapped up in our work. We forget to shower, to shave, and sometimes to eat. We have a hard time communicating with people who don’t have a clue about coding.

This is so true though.