There's a economic fallacy underlying a lot of complaints about Steemit being "unfair."

Was it really worth all that money?

The fallacy shows up as a flawed assumption I see at play when people bemoan the make-up tutorial that garnered a Steemit payout of thousands of dollars. It also shows up when authors beg for upvotes by announcing how much time and effort was put into researching and writing a post. It's the assumption that a post possesses an inherent value, and as such, there are some posts that really deserve thousands of dollars in payout, and other posts that don't.

This assumption is nothing new. In fact, it's based on an economic fallacy found in the work of many early economists, including most prominently the pseudoeconomist Karl Marx. And it has a name: the Labor Theory of Value.

The flawed assumption is this: that the value of a thing is comprised of how much work went into producing it. So if I throw together a few quick paragraphs on why I distrust the government, that's seen to have less value than a longer essay for which I take the time to research and substantiate my claims. I might add relevant quotes and statistics, and then take even more time and effort to edit out grammatical mistakes. You get the idea: if I work hard for two hours on a post, that's probably more deserving of your upvote and a high payout than if I throw together a few thoughts in under five minutes.

It all boils down to the idea of value - it's assumed that if I spend more time and effort on a post, that I've somehow created more value. That's the Labor Theory of Value in a nutshell. But is it a correct assumption?

Imagine two house painters who both do good work. You want your house painted before a party that's being hosted at your house in a week's time. If one painter takes days and days to painstakingly indulge his painting perfectionism, while another does a great job and completes the job much sooner, then the amount of time and effort put into the job can actually detract from its value. Especially if you're paying that house painter by the hour.

Now, let's compare two hypothetical posts: one describing a promising new cure for back pain, and one complaining about how someone's coworkers are always rude. This second post is a long-winded complaint full of anger and gossip, and its author labored hard over it. It's 4,000 words long, full of carefully crafted sentences, and painstakingly edited down to the last period. The post on the potential cure for back pain is three paragraphs long, written hurriedly, and lacks proper punctuation. Which post is more valuable to a hypothetical reader?

Is a post's value in its content?

You probably think you know where I'm going with this.. the logical conclusion here is that a post's value isn't contained in its labor, but rather in its content. That seems like a logical conclusion to draw, but it's also wrong. Many people might find value in a post announcing a potential cure for back pain, even if that post wasn't labored over. But not everyone would.

And what about a baker who creates a beautiful three-tiered wedding cake: she sifts flour that she milled herself from organic wheatberries; she uses full-creamed milk expressed from her own dairy cow that morning, eggs gathered from her chickens out back, and she sweetens the cake with honey from hives she, herself, tends. She pipes out the frosting with her own hand-made piping tool, and it takes her hours to form three hundred individual iced roses. She has put a ton of labor into this gorgeous, delicious cake. But does her hard work give the cake an inherent value? Not for a person who is diabetic, or allergic to milk or eggs, or gluten intolerant. For them, this cake holds no value worth paying for.

The reason labor (time and effort) fails to give any commodity is value is because value always lies with the consumer of that commodity. It's a concept similar to the old adage that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. In the case of Steemit, the value of an author's post doesn't lie in the post itself. There is no inherent value in any post on Steemit or any commodity ever produced. The value exists in the mind of its consumer. Some people will value a post highly, some less so, and some not at all. The post itself doesn't contain value; its readers determine its value to them. If you spend hours researching and crafting and editing a post on the benefits of a Trump presidency, it still won't hold any value for a committed Democrat.

Value is subjective.

That's because value is subjective. It varies from person to person. And it has nothing to do with how long it took to write a post on Steemit or the content it offers - some readers will value a post more highly than others, and that value will change from one person to the next.

Was the make-up tutorial really worth thousands of dollars? You can't say yes or no; nobody can. There is no inherent value in that post. The value came from the Steemit members who upvoted it, and the value they found there likely had nothing to do with its content or how long it took to produce. That doesn't mean it held no value for the people who upvoted it. Aside from the people who were interested in its content, most of the post's value likely existed in its curation potential, as the upvoters perceived and calculated it for themselves.

Our belief that Steemit must somehow be "fixed" to prevent undeserving posts from earning money is based on a fallacy. Just because the value doesn't exist for you, doesn't mean it can't exist in any number of ways for other people.