I agree with you. I wish there had been an opportunity to earn when I first joined medium and before I started so many blogs of my own. I love Medium because it’s so user friendly. There are no technical hassles. We can just enjoy writing.
Another benefit you didn’t mention was all the free reading we get. We not only have the opportunity to earn money by writing but we get free access after that to the writing everyone else does. This is like a free education not only in writing but in many scientific areas I would never read about otherwise.