Near-zero barrier of entry, direct compensation for creation of value, open and permission-less information hosting platform, accessibility for everyone to hold stake, superior payment network and system.. What more can people ask for!

As it stands, the incentive to sign up already trumps any potential monetary referral incentive. in fact even if the sign up subsidies are lifted (all account sign ups on steemit are paid for by @steemit by the way), an account will worth way more to a person than 10 steem required to sign up.

Humans are dicks, there's no changing that, no hard forks and coding can entirely mitigate that away. It comes down to the mindset of the person itself, the scarcity and abundance mindset.

Someone with a scarcity mindset will be worried that too many people joining will create competition to the reward pool. with little knowledge or regard to the Metcalfe's Law. Where it pays more to get half as much rewards in token when each token is 3 times more valuable, for example.

Someone with an abundance will realize there's more incentive to get the closest people to him to sign up and be a part of his circle where everyone can help each other to rise up the steem ladder. where its easy to keep morale and encourage each other to engage in steem.

I am all for getting people to know about steem. short of shouting it from the rooftop, im doing everything else I am capable.

As it stands now, we are the witnesses of Steem's 0.0001% beginning of the journey towards maturity.

early or late, eventually everyone will use steem. There's just no way to argue against that.