I'm also looking forward to hearing from Daniel Larimer (Steemit Co-Founder). I was reading one of his posts

https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@dantheman/daniel-larimer--co-founder-of-bitshares-steemit

and this jumped out: "...the premise that everyone who brings value deserves a share"

Based on that I'm guessing that the verification (however long it takes --- mine was three days) is to prevent the flood users intended to abuse the system.

This is one incident that comes to mind:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/13/tech/social-media/zelda-williams-twitter/index.html

Interestingly...the verification process was put to the test by @devi1714 (he created 15 accounts which all took a week to get approved)

https://steemit.com/spaminator/@devi1714/the-ease-of-bypassing-steemit-s-account-approval