Maybe I misread your original post, which is what informed my reading of your follow-up, but it seems as if you think that posts should be rewarded based on their intrinsic value, as if the quality of a post can be measured objectively. But that doesn't make sense because quality is subjective, especially on the Internet. Posts don't really have a measurable intrinsic value; market value, on the other hand, is signaled by price. If you write something you feel is worth $1,000 USD because of the time and energy you put into it, but the community only rewards it with $50 USD worth of votes, then $50 USD is its market value on Steemit because that's what the community (including you) said it was worth. In that sense, the community decides what is best for itself, which is how the upvote system works.  Intrinsic value =/= market value. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/011215/what-difference-between-intrinsic-value-and-current-market-value.asp By putting it on Steemit, you are basically submitting your work to a 'pay what you want' model where upvotes are weighted 'likes.' The fact that you think you didn't get rewarded for what you believe was the post's intrinsic value is on you. You could have sold it to a news site for a fixed price, or turned it into a Kindle book and sold it for x amount of dollars.