There are several ways to get an account, but if you could make it work, this would be the only way to get an account with a starting balance.
Not sure about elsewhere but here in Australia it's very difficult to buy steem without jumping through heaps of ID hoops.
Plenty of people who like the concept will want to jump in with a decent starting balance instead of bootstrapping for 6 months, particularly non - bloggers who see curation as a way to get a good ROI.