I keep reminding myself of the old truism that you can fill a bucket of water with a dripping faucet... and yet nobody would knowingly set about filling a bucket of water with a dripping faucet.
My point? Every single day, there are thousands of users who cash out and power down because "Oh look, I have 10 Steem, let me take that out and use it for a movie!" rather than just powering up and actually investing in the platform. These tiny amounts of Steem may seem inconsequential on an individual basis, but if you consider that they go out as thousands of sell orders daily, it puts constant and tremendous downwards price pressure on Steem. Even if just half those people started powering up instead of cashing out? That oversupply of liquidity would start to dry up, and buyers would start to exceed sellers... and we all know what that does...
People who are living in struggling countries have a hard time going from post to eat to post to invest mentality. All things being equal this is what could allow them to bootstrap themselves out of poverty.
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How many small transfers of Steem by minnows does it take to equal one day of Steemit powering down? I disagree with your premise, and the evidence that it is whales selling the vast majority of Steem - not minnows - is on steemd.