I quote page 20 of steemit white paper:
The impact of steemit voting and payout distribution is to offer large bounties for good content while still rewarding smaller players for their long-tail contribution. The economic effect of this is similar to a lottery where people over-estimate their probability of getting votes and thus do more work than the expected value of their reward and thereby maximize the total amount of work performed in service of the community.
People often quote that line like it is a bad thing but somehow no one ever seems to pay much attention to the last phrase
... maximize the total amount of work performed in service of the community
I happen to think that is a good thing. This is not a lottery where the benefits flow to a lottery promoter or operator. The "ticket sales revenue" here takes the form of producing valuable content and participation as public goods. In economics we know well that public goods are often under-produced and finding ways to pay for them effectively can be very challenging.
The psychological effect described in the white paper may or may not play a big role (no one can really prove this either way). If it does I say so much the better.