You brought up a good analogy that a lot of newcomers should understand. When you tell some people about Steem, they say things like, "what? you can vote for yourself and give yourself money?" It sounds strange to give yourself money, but that is what mining is. In other words, if you own stocks in a company and you earn dividends, suppose you could give those dividends to someone else. If you choose to give the dividends to yourself, would people say, "that's absurd!"? Not really, it is how it works!

With Steem, you have the option of giving your dividends (upvotes) to yourself (just a like a owning stocks would or mining) or you can give it to somebody else. It just seems strange to some people because there is a choice. But if the only choice is to give it to yourself, then it doesn't sound far-fetched to noobs.