Yes, the mainstream crowd will not have much in the way of stake. Because that will probably be the case, they will not earn much, either, except for a few talented content creators. They will, however, be what attracts the corporations. There has to be something it it for them. If the opportunity to earn money will be limited with stiff competition, then it has to be the social interaction. Steemit, Inc is doing exactly the right thing by making sure the back end is capable of handling the onboarding of the masses and creating developer-friendly interface on top of the node interfaces. After that, it will be up to third parties to create all the sexy and snazzy front ends for the end user to fall in love with.

By the way, I think much of the confusion as to what Steem is at the moment is caused by the fact that all the potential use cases of Steem the blockchain are yet unknown.