In the stock example, if you were to hypothetically buy 100% of the stock of the company - you would own the company. Assuming it was making a profit, all of the profit would be yours. Even if nobody else wanted to buy any of your shares, you would still own the company and be entitled to all the profit.

The difference with Steem is that regardless of how many 'shares' you own, if there is nobody to buy those shares from you, there is no intrinsic value behind them. You don't really own anything that is making a 'profit' besides the coins themselves.

As long as there is a buyer for every seller though, then the currency has value. Arguing the other side - one big thing that makes Steem different than shares of a company, is that it can also be used as a currency - similar to Bitcoin, and currencies have value. As the currency is accepted by more people, they are assigning value to it. By accepting it as a form of payment, they are essentially willing to 'buy' the coin - in exchange for whatever goods and services they are willing to provide in exchange. This basically ensures that there will be a buyer for every seller - which is a good thing for the coin.

The responses I have gotten from this post (including yours) have been interesting. There have been lots of people arguing for changes in the payout formula (which I am fairly strongly opposed to). Pretty much everyone who has provided a reason to buy Steem is saying the same thing as you. You buy it because you expect the price to go up. That seems to be the main argument in favor of buying Steem.

There are going to be speculative investors. There are going to be marketplaces opening up that will accept Steem/SBD. Both of these things will add value to the Steem coin. That is a given.

There is potential to do so much more though!

Assuming Steem/it takes off and becomes as big as everyone hopes/thinks it will, there are going to be millions of excited users. Some of these users (I would argue a small amount) will invest in Steem because they see it is a good investment. There are not that many "investing" type users though.

On the other hand, tons of people dump $20, $50, $100 into all kinds of online games that they play (Candy Crush, Pokemon, etc.). Steemit is a game. If there is enough of a motivation to "play", and advance by paying a bit out of their pocket - a lot of users will happily "invest" in order to advance in the game.

With the right incentives (outside of the payout/influence formula) to power up and earn/buy more SP, we will tap into what I believe is Steem/it's biggest potential investing market - its millions of active and excited users who want to play and win the game.