"I am quite surprised how difficult it is to giveaway money on Steem."

You pretty much explained some of the reasons why with this article.

I think in the larger scheme of things, the issue is that people hear about Steem as social media with rewards, then they hear about the quick success stories, then they sign up thinking that they're the "next big thing" in social media, and then reality smacks them hard in the face. It's as if they create the false impression in their minds that money always has constant (instead of diminishing) marginal value relative to quality of life while they're on Steemit, and when they finally come to terms to the fact that they were wrong, they give up and go back to their old social media ways. They tried, and figured out (in their minds) that Steemit isn't worth their time and effort, that it has brought their weighted quality of life down compared to what they were doing before.

Also most ordinary people don't think in terms of a utility-based system like you've described because it's either impractical or because they aren't aware that such a system exists. For instance, I'm here writing up this comment after having read through your article because I'm not particularly busy with anything else at the moment and there's nothing else that I feel that I urgently need to do right now. But if you had posted this article exactly 23 hours prior to when you did, I would've been feeling too busy to even bother to comment. Instead of taking the time to read through your entire article now, 23 hours ago I would've just skimmed it, delivered an upvote, and probably forgotten about it completely by now.

In the end, it comes down to how we value our time in the moment. It just happens to be that right now, I believe my time is being well-spent to make this comment. Many others believe that they would be wasting their time to read your article or to make the effort to search for this information.