The error is in assuming either 'value' or 'earnings' are owed to the miner. Until the miner does the actual work (collected in 'value') and earned the pool enough funds (collected in 'earnings'), nothing is due under MaxPPS. For an ordinary miner, in an ordinary scenario, doing the work should also earn the funds required. There are two scenarios where this is not the case:

• someone withholding valid blocks -- in this case, under MaxPPS, he harms the overall pool income, and inevitably everyone is hit with a loss in 'earnings' -- with straight PPS, the pool operator takes 100% of the risk for this, even if he charges a large fee (both DeepBit and BitPenny charged 10%, and the latter had to close because it was losing too much money even still)
• pool hoppers -- in this case, under MaxPPS, pool hoppers might continue to work only on short blocks, and always participate in earning the pool the appropriate funds to pay for the work they do, but they are never paid more than the work they do, so there is no incentive to hop -- under straight Proportional, these miners would only participate when there was a chance at getting paid more than the work they put into the pool, and inevitably the pool would be left empty if everyone did it

You can't fairly disregard fees here. Straight PPS is impractical even with a 10% fee. MaxPPS should pay out more than that remaining 90% in theory.

The mistake here is in assuming the pool actually has funds to pay everyone's "value"; if that is the case, it also means everyone has the "earnings" too. The only time these are different are in excessive periods of bad luck (possibly induced artificially by a cheater) when everyone shares the "hit", or excessive periods of luck where everyone is paid in full for the work they do (and all build a reserve to cover the risk of future bad luck).

If you know of a better way, feel free to suggest it. Every other way I've seen is unfair to some normal miners.