Salaries in the US are a lot higher than global average, especially anywhere near silicon valley. I estimate the global average to be about 50k a year for programmers.
Although it would be nice to hire full develipment teams, the idea is to save cost. Full time legal team, marketing and artists doesn't really make sense. If the money is burned on development instead of null, the price will continually go down since 75 million steem is a lot.
It's possible to reach a happy medium of development, the extra beefy dao pool may make this possible, but it is also a looming risk legally and a warning to serious investors.
Steemit was legally registered in the US and developing from there may become difficult if legals are persued which is very possible. We may be wasting am awful lot of money on legal defense. It's easily framed as greyzone stuff. To nocoiners it could possibly be seen like theft or plunder. Who is to say development didn't end at smt and justin didn't legally by it? Did he suffer damages from the fork? His lawyers could harass us for years and years.
It will be interesting to find out what happens, it is definitely too early to be trickling it into the dao.