My only fear is that as the minnows grow up will the greed consume them as well

Sadly, your fear is not unfounded. Money corrupts people and if you can make money by not giving back and just giving to yourself, arguably a lot of people would take the less morally correct path to Steemitdom.

I dont know if you notied, minnows dont upvote minnows.

Oh, man. I have noticed. I regularly use up over 60% of my voting power daily upvoting good comments and content. I've been a member of Steemit for basically four months now and I've struggled a lot. I get Minnows commenting on my posts all of the time, and ironically they rarely upvote the post. Why bother commenting if you're not going to upvote (unless it's a comment disagreeing), makes no sense.

Thankfully I found some great initiatives like the Minnow Support Project and Team Australia (shout out to @teamaustralia) which have been very gracious and supportive of myself and many others. I don't let the promise of money motivate me on Steemit, if I make money then that's great, if not, I still get value out of being here.