I'm brand new here; (as in yesterday) and am completely unsure of everything, but it seems to me that Steem arrives it's value out of the community of ideas, much the way the $ gets it's value from the faith in our form of government. The better your idea, or expression of it are, the more value it incurs ( think the U S government v. Zimbabwe, which issued a 10 trillion dollar note worth almost nothing).The more productive you are the more you should earn, as should be the case in any economy.