Thank you for your detailed reply @swissclive. I took some time before answering, apologies for that. About the seductiveness of the platform: we know that if someone wants to be addicted to something nowadays we all are spoiled for choice. It's intrinsic to the society we live in, based on consumerism underlying the concept of continuous profit/growth, no matter if sustainable or not. But I don't want to look like a Luddite here. What I wanted to mention is that the gratification mechanism of the steemit platform is peculiar as it associates to the social gratification an instant economical one. I believe that people more clever than me could study this from a neurological perspective or else according to the principles of CBT, cognitive behavioural theory.
I mentioned a Ponzi scheme as an analogy from a social point of view more that the economical fraud per se. In a Ponzi, the pyramid consisting of few healthy people is sustained by the enlargement and exploitation of the base and so on, till the pyramid crashes but the big fish (blink) are already happy and escaped elsewhere..does it recall something? As of now in my opinion there are great people here but there are also some whales taking advantage of their being on the top of the pyramid and looting the pool unashamedly. Since you mentioned the traditional markets, in every regulated stock exchange there are authorities that intervene, let's say, in case of insider trading. Why not here? Is this - together with the highly pyramidal structure and the competitive moat - supposed to create trust and attract newcomers to this platform?
Yes the gratification is peculiar because it drives some bloggers insane that they can’t get rich quickly despite their “wonderful” blogs. “Tough” is what I say. There’s more chance of getting rich in a casino (i.e. rather unlikely)