You said facebook. I used that damn thing for nine years! Just imagine if you were paid for each like given and received over a span of that many years.
Yes! This is the point of the rewards structure. There's no guarantee that you'll make tons of money or become a popular blogger. But if you spend as much time creating, interacting, or upvoting content like you do on other platforms, over time, you'll at least earn some money for doing it.
After nine years on Steemit...who knows where you'll be? Who knows where the platform will be? All of the current active users could be millionaires by then.
Or, we could all be earning nothing again like the Facebook users. Not knowing is half the fun!
There aren't any guarantees on Youtube either. Plenty of accounts going nowhere on that platform. Probably more dead channels than live. That's life in the entertainment game.