Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're probably right, but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem. People who do intellectual labor, such as writing books, must be paid because everyone must be paid. Nothing is free. There are two options: (1) Copyright law, which allows them to erect toll booths and charge readers and users for their work. (2) A socialist type of system where writers and other intellectual laborers are supported publicly. The…
no it is not the default that " intellectual labor" must be paid for in currency (which is the assumption of your post) my comment here for example is " intellectual labor" but i am not paid for it There are all kinds of labor that people do with out being paid in currency for it, they derive other value from that labor. You then present a false dilemma in that it is either copyright law or socialism (public funding)…
It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out.
The same applies to any non-trivial piece of music, art, software, engineering, design, or any other form of intellectual labor. People spend years and years on that stuff but only after they spend years and years getting good enough at their craft to actually produce it.
I guess there's another option beyond the two I cited above:
(3) Everything is low effort shit.
Open Source is almost entirely funded by large companies. Pick a popular FOSS project and look at who's committing to it. They're people being paid by large companies to do the work because the company has some vested interest in supporting it. The counter-examples are either SaaS driven (meaning they're not really open) or dual licensed (meaning they're using copyright law).
This sort of philanthropy has limits. In particular it doesn't work for consumer items, only for stuff that companies use directly.
I really don't think you want to bring up YouTube as it actually proves my point. YouTube is a cesspool of propaganda and divisive trolling. That's the kind of content you get when it's "free" and creators must find roundabout ways to get paid for it, such as by stoking society's divisions for attention to monetize ad views.