Cryptos have always struck me as as both a stroke of genius and a perfect analogy for human stupidity. On the one hand you have an amazing technology, freeing people from banks and government bureaucracy. On the other hand, the way in which new coins are minted is the definition of a useless task. It's rather like being paid to dig a hole and fill it in again.
Yes I'm aware that Steem has to be mined like all the coins and mining has to exist for the foreseeable future , but by providing an avenue for would-be miners to do something more productive than wasting electricity and burning out GPUs it can only be of benefit to both the Steemit user and the planet's resources. By earning Steem on Steemit you are providing value, even if it's just your jumbled thoughts. It would also probably help with mining difficulty for those brave souls who persist with mining if less people do it.
Someone on here today informed me of Gridcoin, which you can get by solving problems that benefit humanity. Imagine a crypto given out for people who can prove they picked up litter, or drove an elderly or disabled person somewhere like a free Uber app.