Sly, except that no one benefits from it aside from as spam prevention for the network. It's an artificial cost to compensate for the artificial subsidy of "fee free" transactions, resulting in unnecessary economic friction. EOS and Steem instead pay for transaction costs directly through dilution of their native tokens, resulting in profit if those transactions create value, and loss if they do not. Since transactions are rate limited based on stake, those with nothing at stake can't spam the network and waste its resource without the consent of those who are invested in its success.