"Because that has anything what so ever to the question regarding what you perceive as A Utility from Steem."

Good point. A utility is a state or quality of being useful. The only reason I can think of for investing in Steem is the bigger upvote, that would be it's utility to me. A bigger upvote allows you to reward yourself more. It used to be right next to the publish button, there was an upvote post button to save you the extra step of upvoting it after you published.

"False. Owning Steem doesn't draw you any, ANY rewards. Locking up your Steem does."

True, but yeah powering-up is the next logical step to get there. Powered-up Steem has merit because it takes longer for it to go back to the market. Now if you show someone with powered up Steem that you won't respect the merit of their upvotes, it gives them good reason to dump their stake to the market which drives prices down.