Steemit - Some identity questions

Let me ask you something and as a disclaimer I am invested in Steem as well.

If everyone on Steem enters and uses steem for blogging, vlogging and everyone expects to have followers, upvotes and earn money, who is then financing what everyone is upvoting. Isn't the very nature of the system paradox?

In other words:
What is the asset back-up for the upvote to be worth real money, real dollars?

Isn't the system build as a big "expectancy system" in which you basically have to depend upon the fact that more people buy into the idea and the dollars themselves and more and more money gets put into the system in order to keep the system running? There is no asset with true industrial means behind this, right? There is no company backing up this thing with marketing budget behind this right? There is no hard evidence that your vote has actually created value at someones place, right? Does your vote mean that you created value or that one of your followers upvoted for whatsoever reason? Doesn't the upvote of your follow lead to more follows and more upvotes and more money and more people joining?

Isn't all of this what the general sub-prime crisis, the general ABS snowball system during the financial crisis laid out to be one of the biggest frauds in world's history in which people paid 10 houses while having money for 1?

And on the other side:
Wasn't the hole idea of decentralization to give more power to the individuals (as in an infinite group of people) rather than an individual (not the plural..) in order to overcome the flaws of having one person saying what's wrong and what right? But wouldn't all of the above mentioned question-answer-rhetorical anticipation-monologue ulimately mean that this is not about decentralization, but about the fact that other individuals than the already important individuals on planet earth would win more reputation which would in return bring them power. With this power they would make money and with this money and reputation each and every individual would become an institution of its own so to speak.

Think about this? Are we a movement or are we basically the Rockefellers 2.0?

How much money did I make here?
How much money did I make on youtube?
Let's try this experiment...and then tell me if this is substantially sustainable in the long run.