While vote buying might be bad, the reality, of the situation is that anybody that invested a good amount of time into creating content, will hope to get something in return for it. If a person spends 3 days to write a thoughtful piece of content and has had no success with earning, then that user might come to the conclusion that promoting their content is equally important and hence use all of the available means on offer. The other options would be to give up on writing or scale it down along with their expectations.

I'm pretty sure that's what happens, just depends on how long an individual is prepared to keep at it. Some stop very fast and some might try and try for months, as is evident in the blogosphere in general. On the other hand the financial reward is at least in sight on Steemit.