It depends , whether steemit is trying to reach out to the Everyday reader where content are freely shared and read, versus the altruistic notion where content has to be original. I suspect the former. But I agreed , the voting algorithm has to be tweak to encourage original contents.

I belong to the Everyday reader group. I don't post much , but spend time on steemit reading interesting stuffs be it original or not, and up voting those I like. Somewhat like a Wikipedia surfer.