I think we would largely agree on the meat and potatoes - we just have a small disagreement of opinion, no biggie :)
>I just don't feel it's correct to say that the contributions actually had no monetary value, they definitely did, it's just that we handed it to Stack Overflow for free in exchange for participating in the platform.
How did you know the answer had value when you typed it up? The value is not solely determined by you or me - It's by the large number of visitors/viewers actually benefiting from the answer. And you need both, the platform attracting tons of readers, and the high-quality answer.
Certainly, there is lots that can be said here to expand on that and add more nuance, but not in a comment box.