buying a stake, say $100 each, is the only way to participate in the chain, the trade-off being that participating in the chain is generally more worthwhile.

yeah, that was exactly my point. Technically, the Steem blockchain can be copied in a few minutes, it's all open source (and it's good that it is like that). So the only real business advantage is turniing the early adopters into the founding fathers that may or may not allow other "citizens" into their "country".