Yeah this is a necessary component of the platform because money (SBD/Steem) needs to be spent on something or else the currency is useless. Sure the community aspect is great and all that but if you have a useless currency the product is not going to have any value. Just my two cents.
It's another token in the ecosystem of tokens. we take the token out of play you have a social network on it's surface. You put the token back into play now you get rewarded for participating in a organic way. the token can be traded for other tokens and fiat or asset's like many other tokens. That is a utility of sorts. better applications will be developed that will want Steem for use and what were talking about is paying steem to get more views and essentially more steem. Thats a Loop, the utility I do not see so much beyond the issue of junk control to a lesser extent. Also the value comes from less trolls under the bridge hopefully. And I imagine it makes it harder for the NSA as well which is a plus.