Exactly this. If you want steemit to work, you have to work it and that means doing more than just using your votes on yourself. You have to spread the love and get this economy working. Buying steem and steem power are also good, healthy inputs into the steemit economy.

This is so much bigger than just another website to post lunch photos on. Cryptocurrency and the block chain / smart contract / decentralized exchange of goods and services and compensation concepts are a new way to do business, and a new way to use "currency" and a new paradigm in economics.

Folks who don't take a few minutes to understand what we are doing on steemit will end up just being the "consumers" in this economy, but those who publish and interact and vote wisely and buy and sell STEEM and bring new spends into the economy by buying steem and steem power and participating actively in all things related to the eco-system will be the market makers, movers and shakers and ultimately the steemit whales and tycoons.

If you could go back in time, to the beginnings of the US Dollar. Would you rather become an innovative, highly contributing wealth creator, like say Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford or do you want to end up just being a basic consumer who sort of let it all pass them by only to end up working all day for peanuts?

The difference is in the balance of selfishness and selflessness that you apply to the endeavor.

So by all means, vote for yourselves and your friends. But if you exclude everyone else, then @sean-king is right, you have only set yourself up to be excluded by everyone else.

#LetThatSinkIn

We are all in this together. If you work only for yourself, this place won't last very long. If we work to promote others, and earn the value of promotion BY others for ourselves, we will get MUCH further as a whole towards helping steemit and steem achieve the momentum and attraction they need to take over the world!