This is the way. Tons of people will stay on Reddit, Reddit will be fine. Just look at Facebook, how long it has lasted and what it has done, etc. Reddit is the new Facebook (platform, not company) and tons of people will be fine sticking with it. That's okay.
The beauty is we have options, and we're working to improve those options.
I agree.. BUT, i think it's important to also remember that for-profit like Reddit will have incentives to drive engagement patterns which can sometimes (i'm being generous heh) be toxic to the social atmosphere.
Opensource implementations have a chance to change interaction that is more favorable to the user, to the community, etc. I don't believe Lemmy or Kbin offer much here, yet, but Tildes.net talks about this and makes an effort there.
I'd like to see a federated instance that puts more effort in this space. It won't be what Redditors want.. because, well, Reddit built addictive patterns and this is the opposite of that. But nonetheless i think we can make progress on Reddit-likes when we carefully analyze what ramifications Reddit features have.