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), there are a whole host of funding models that have been proven to work over and over again that require neither. Open Source is a ripe with examples, YouTube also provides for some, but there are many others (including complete creative Commons books that are funding voluntarily, and voluntary "Pay what you want" systems)
i personally enjoy generating knowledge based products the payment being the edification of other person[s] in particular when the result is a synthesis beyond the original publication[s].
You are really comparing a Hacker News comment that took 1-2 minutes to write with the content of libraries? It's hard for me to write a civil rebuttal to this.
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.
Your point is very good. However I do want to mention a very limited exception. I am an academic and I write texts that are Free. I figure that a (I hope!) good text raises the profile of my institution and that students come to study at an institution because it has a good reputation. So while, as you say,
> It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out.
nonetheless these works are freely available.
However, despite perhaps a few exceptions here and there (Kahn Academy is another), overall I very much agree. People have to be be paid. And while Patreon-type stuff is a great idea as far as it goes, it is not sufficient.
How are you defining "good book"? Successful in the marketplace?
No one gets paid to "spend years and years getting good enough at their craft" of writing. Very few people get paid reasonably to "spend years and years on" writing a good book.
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), there are a whole host of funding models that have been proven to work over and over again that require neither. Open Source is a ripe with examples, YouTube also provides for some, but there are many others (including complete creative Commons books that are funding voluntarily, and voluntary "Pay what you want" systems)