Just my two cents here, and probably a little tangential.

Because every action taken on the blockchain incurs some sort of cost, this takes away incentive to just be social.
I noticed that posting costs the most RC mana, just upvoting costs the least RC mana. I think there should be one or some level of free interaction. like a dm or private message or something. I think it is funny that we all use discord to talk with each other about our amazing social media platform.
At the moment I am not smart enough to criticize anything about how steem works under the hood.

To answer the actual question you asked though:
If you were to upvote my content I would use it to buy eggs and bread. I would eat those eggs and bread while I make more content. Lol. For real though, I do not think it asking too much to get minimum wage or more from contributing value to the world.
I read through 3/4 of your article, and was going to leave a comment. Then I realized that s*it don't fly on steem. I am paying money (kinda) to share my opinion about your opinion, on this page, forever. So I better bring some real thought to the table. Read the whole post all the way through, and reread and edit your response.

Its all about being your own authentic self. If you put yourself out there and share your knowledge and experience in a valid and beautiful way, you should be rewarded with an income that provides the bare bones basics. There is a dude (@socky) who gives out free car repair advice and makes $2.50 a post. I would hope actual valuable information like car repair and diagnostics would be worth alot more than that. That car guy deserves beer and pizza for a post that gets a human jetting down the highway at 75 mph.

To tie it all together though, its just car-ma. (ha!) upvote, promote, comment, and like who you believe in without being all gross selfish about it.

Peace and hair grease dudes and lady dudes!