But I think you confuse value with effort. Maybe it takes me an hour to write a post and you it takes only 10 minutes. That's not a sign that my post is inherently more valuable than yours.
And just because you think something is a cheap post, it may be the right thing at the right time for someone else. What your post makes me think though is that there should be two kinds of default upvotes: up-vote for money and rep, and up-vote just for rep (a 0% up-vote).
However, that does not solve the abuse problem, it just allows more fine-tuning of voting.
Sorry, If it seems this way. Value should be somewhere between Originality - Effort - Quality. But the value someone gains should be closer to the metrics than to what we have now.
Value is subjective when it comes to social media.
(But I do agree that non-original works are deeply problematic though and should get a $0 pay-out. )
Exactly, since value is subjective, people should be able to assign a max value to something =)
(At least regarding what they spent on it)
In your example, what happens if there is a fourth upvoter with a max value of $60?
It would work like a 0% upvote.
He'd upvote but it wouldn't change the value.
If he'd upvote with 90$, the one with 90$ would receive a part of his back.
But, as another user mentioned, this system still needs to be adapted, to, for example allow space for curation.
I think a solution would be calculating a "mean-value" of the existing, and allowing to go up to this to avoid 0% votes, to guarantee curation.