I am writing a novel. After more than two years of working on it intermittently, on nights and weekends, I consider it about 80% complete. (Naturally, it will probably take 2 years to finish the remaining 20%.)
I am not being paid to do it. I have no particular expectation that anyone will give me money for it after it is done. I also know that it is probably not as good as a novel written by any of my favorite professional authors.
To indulge this new hobby, I have something called "a day job". Other people who create artworks frequently have one. Only a select few have the independent means to create art full time, and some have acquired a large enough base of supporters to make a living at it.
We have a wealthy society. As such, we are capable of supporting a certain number of people as artists.
But the world does not owe you a living. Less popular and less prolific authors cannot expect to earn enough to write full time just because Stephen King can. A musical performer can't expect to buy a new car even once in his lifetime just because Taylor Swift can now afford one every year for the rest of her life. A painter can't expect to get out of community service because a Banksy can sell for thousands of dollars.
The plain fact of the matter is that there are more people who want to be professional artists than society is currently willing to support. Society likes some artists enough to make them rich, but you're not going to be one of them (unless you get really lucky or are terrifyingly talented). There are plenty more that society will support in a middle-class lifestyle. But for the most part, the aspiring artist's default assumption should be that society wouldn't give two steaming piles for a new work, and it should stay that way until well after the first check clears.
As for myself, I have no plans to quit my day job. Even if I think that my book is better than Twilight, the author of that... piece... actually has dollar-denominated approval from productive society to write books as her full-time profession.
Currently, my plans are to eliminate piracy by seeding the torrents myself, while also providing a painless way for readers to pay me what they want, even if it is just a compliment with no money attached. If I get even one penny, it will be more than what I expected in return for a work of art that no one but me ever asked for.
That is why there is no danger to artistic culture. Even if no one else cares for it, there is still a reward for the creators in their pride of craftsmanship, their knowledge that they created something unique, that did not exist until their will brought it into existence.
I've recently taken up cooking as a hobby. I've been making at least 2 meals a day, experimenting with a variety of cooking styles. I've invested my own money into equipment and food - most of it is not cheap. Like you, I supported my surprisingly expensive hobby with a day job.
That said, I would never ever for a moment think that line cooks don't deserved to get paid, just because I am not.
But your analogy is flawed. When a line cook makes a meal, there is a physical good that can only be consumed once. What we are discussing here is whether the line cook should be paid for the recipe, any time anyone uses it, rather than just for the service of preparing the food.
Your assumption is that producing a recipe is easier than producing food. It's not.
Writing a novel is incredibly difficult. It often takes years of absolutely thankless work. Your friends and family think you've gone mad, or you're just wasting your time tooling away on "that book." (Eye roll.)
Music is the same: hard work, endless practice, stop energy. "When are you going to quit that band and get a real job?"
Culture is not free. It's created by the blood, sweat, and tears of people who are willing to stand up against their own doubts and the subtile discouragement of others to channel some intensely personal muse, refine the signal in thousands of hours of dull practice and repetitive revision, and finally deliver something that we can enjoy.
But hey, we're all entitled to their works for free because we're the all-important consumer!
The "information should be free" ideology elevates the passive consumer above the active producer both morally and economically. The consumer has all the freedom and all the benefit for none of the work. Once I saw the injustice in this, I could not un-see it.
Fundamentally I think it's a half-baked ideology that comes from people who are looking only at the Internet in isolation from the rest of the socioeconomic system. Most of these people are well-intentioned, but the ideology fails.
It might work if we lived in a post-scarcity society where income wasn't strictly necessary since the marginal cost of everything is approaching zero. But we're nowhere even close to that.
Your post, whether you realize it or not, assumes that the labor theory of value is true.
The difficulty of producing the first copy is of almost no significance economically, in comparison to the marginal cost to produce one more copy than already exists.
The recipe may be difficult to create, but it is dead simple to copy. The song is difficult to compose, but easier to perform, easier still to play a recorded performance, and easiest of all to copy a recording. The book is hard to write, but easier to read, and easiest to copy.
We are not entitled to any work for free. But we have a reasonable economic expectation that what we pay to enjoy it will be close to what it costs to create an additional copy. If we elect to pay more, it will be because we wish to encourage the artist to create more works at a reasonable cost. Whether you believe that the artist is entitled to more, or not, depends in large part on whether you believe that culture should be an oligopoly good, or a commoditized good.
I am not being paid to do it. I have no particular expectation that anyone will give me money for it after it is done. I also know that it is probably not as good as a novel written by any of my favorite professional authors.
To indulge this new hobby, I have something called "a day job". Other people who create artworks frequently have one. Only a select few have the independent means to create art full time, and some have acquired a large enough base of supporters to make a living at it.
We have a wealthy society. As such, we are capable of supporting a certain number of people as artists.
But the world does not owe you a living. Less popular and less prolific authors cannot expect to earn enough to write full time just because Stephen King can. A musical performer can't expect to buy a new car even once in his lifetime just because Taylor Swift can now afford one every year for the rest of her life. A painter can't expect to get out of community service because a Banksy can sell for thousands of dollars.
The plain fact of the matter is that there are more people who want to be professional artists than society is currently willing to support. Society likes some artists enough to make them rich, but you're not going to be one of them (unless you get really lucky or are terrifyingly talented). There are plenty more that society will support in a middle-class lifestyle. But for the most part, the aspiring artist's default assumption should be that society wouldn't give two steaming piles for a new work, and it should stay that way until well after the first check clears.
As for myself, I have no plans to quit my day job. Even if I think that my book is better than Twilight, the author of that... piece... actually has dollar-denominated approval from productive society to write books as her full-time profession.
Currently, my plans are to eliminate piracy by seeding the torrents myself, while also providing a painless way for readers to pay me what they want, even if it is just a compliment with no money attached. If I get even one penny, it will be more than what I expected in return for a work of art that no one but me ever asked for.
That is why there is no danger to artistic culture. Even if no one else cares for it, there is still a reward for the creators in their pride of craftsmanship, their knowledge that they created something unique, that did not exist until their will brought it into existence.