Another important adding, thank you @tibra!
I'm glad this statement is at the top of the thread now :)

This it what the Steem white paper says:

All forms of capital are equally valuable. This means that those who contribute their scarce time and attention toward producing and curating content for others are just as valuable as those who contribute their scarce cash. This is the sweat equity principle and is a concept that prior cryptocurrencies have often had trouble providing to more than a few dozen individuals.

We're not seeing much of that in reality. But there are lots of new projects in the pipeline that might bring the needed solutions, just thinking about SMT Oracles for instance.