If you're just using this site like it was Medium or Reddit, you don't really need to understand this stuff. It's easy to sign up without understanding or caring about the economic aspects. All you need to know is that you might get rewarded if you contribute value, and get lucky.
Investors do need to understand all this stuff. But that's part of the due diligence of investing. Thankfully Steem does not ask users to be investors any more than Reddit or Facebook does. But it opens it up so that anybody can invest if they want to. An intellectual barrier to investment is pretty normal, investing wisely always involves paying attention to the details and understand what you are buying into.