The powerful thing about Steemit is that content creators are paid directly from the blockchain (consumers aren't paying for content directly).  In other words, the money being earned on posts doesn't come directly from the pockets of people, it comes from the money supply from the Steem blockchain.

The original sin of the Internet is that ads are the business model and consumers get everything for free. So far, consumers have demonstrated that they are irrational when it comes to spending money for content and even if its micropayments, they don't really want to pay for content directly. This could change if the UX gets super simple and something like Bitcoin enables small payments. But I think Steem is a fascinating experiment because people are actually earning thousands of dollars for posts by earning money directly from the blockchain.