"One issue, currently, is the lack of perpetual payouts on Steem."

This is indeed an issue with Steem. I have content from a decade ago on other sites still making me a trickle of money with ads. Even though it's not much it just adds up over time.

I have little doubt that it would also work like that on Steem, adding up to a nice little extra over time for authors.

Every once in a while I still get a vote on an old post on Steemit, so people do vote for older posts.