It's a trade off. You burn STEEM to get upvotes. For new authors (those who rarely break the $0.02 mark), the tag pays off.

The real question is: Does the game improve STEEM? I fear that the answer is "no." The biggest problem STEEM has is that the most of the STEEM is held by whales who rarely upvote the posts of new users.

The problem with #burnsteem25 is that we end up burning the STEEM that would otherwise go to small accounts. This ends up perpetuating the imbalance of STEEM.

BTW: I could borrow the $400 I need to get my upvote value to $0.02. I am not sure that STEEM will be around by the time that I've earned enough interest to pay the loan back.