Sounds like you regard 'value' as primarily something practical/useful. In terms of posts, the 'main' use/function is to bring more folk to Hive (and raise token value) is it?

For me, blogging has been a question of self-expression primarily.

Our views on this clearly differ fundamentally! When you imply that a 50 USD payout (with less than 50% of it going to the author) for a post which doesn't bring the kind of 'value' you would like to see, is 'frankly crazy in economic terms', I dunno what to say and I guess there isn't any more to say :|

However, I acknowledge your willingness to engage with the subject. We ARE all in this together, that seems inescapable as long as we hang around in this space (kinda like the global situation atm - we're in this together, be it an existential 'viral' threat or an encroaching and disguised system of CONTROL we are up against :).