The Steem model is based on seignorage .. which happens at set and specific rate, much like mining rewards in bitcoin.  Other content monetization models are based on advertising revenues or tipping.  Ad revenues are the predominant model, and there are many side effects of this in modern day media.

In Steem, when participants up-vote someone else, that's the extent of their action, then the blockchain tallies the votes and the posts to decide how to allocate rewards.  So less like paying the authors and more like up-voting them which puts them in a pool to receive rewards from the Steem rewards fountain :)