In ALL ponzi schemes the newbies have to pay money and the prior newbies are paid with these new funds. As long as new newbies are coming in, everything looks fine. As soon as it stops,or even slows down, it collapses.

With steemit, newbies are not asked to pay anything. it is the reverse, they are paid! So if steemit was trying to be a ponzi, it really did a bad job and did it backwards.

most people have not even read https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf, but are quick to conclude it must be a ponzi as it does sound too good to be true. However steemit is not a ponzi and it is pretty good. We just have to grow the userbase faster than the inflation rate and the price of STEEM will actually go up. most people get a vested interest by vesting and we all work toward the same goal.

The only thing steemit has in common with a ponzi is both ponzi and steemit have vowels in them. also ponzi has 5 letters and steemit 7, both are prime numbers.