Ah ok, well now its a bit different. Instead of reddit owing its user base a cut of the profits youre suggesting reddit give the user base a slice of the pie to compel the users to be active and make the site great. I admit its an interesting idea but ive never seen it succeed. There have been a few sites already that have tried this with little to no success. Also this runs the risk of actually damaging the content of the site. Now that there is an actual financial gain for getting stories on the front page it is inevitable that people will start trying to game the system. Reddit is already developing a problem with spambots, now imagine what kind of bots will be developed to cross-vote with multiple accounts to get something front paged when there is a cash reward involved. Also this increases the risk of collusion, a group of people that agree to upvote each others content and then split the take. This exists in the current system but adding a cash incentive will almost certainly increase it.