The role of the strict consumer is not an oversight. The original whitepaper lays it out. Steemit is simply a platform that demonstrates the transaction capacity of the Steem blockchain. Everything that anyone does is a transaction -- post, upvote, comment, etc. The reward pool exists to encourage people to do transactions of one kind or another. In the most simple conception, that's all that's going on here.

But the addition of the Steemit social platform on top of the Steem blockchain did allow unexpected things to happen that could test the blockchain -- scammers, hackers, bots, and more -- and the community could figure out how to deal with them. Other, good, unexpected things could happen, too, as people get to know each other and understand the power of the blockchain. Like utopian.io - nobody saw that coming and it's a big deal. As a social platform, Steemit is also a gateway to cryptocurrency for the average person.

But there was an early appreciation that Steemit is not likely to be the application that ultimately drives the value of Steem upwards. Nobody knows what that application is -- although the SMTs may be it, as they propagate out beyond Steemit.

So the strict consumer doesn't even matter for that bigger picture. The view is that people that are not vested much in the success of Steemit should not have that much effect on what goes on. And the way to become vested is to either invest capital or invest work -- posting, commenting, and community building. People can do well on Steemit by commenting a lot. For folks that don't want to post blogs, commenting is the fastest, easiest way to get SP. Or enter contests -- some are just rolling dice, lol.