If what creators are making is so great and they have an audience that loves their work then they wouldn't be "scraping by". You can have all the free users in the world but if people aren't willing to pay you for your work then I'm sorry but the conclusion isn't that you're valuable. Some guy earning $20k/year on patreon and someone founding a multimillion dollar startup are not even in the same ballpark of creating value. In a market economy you get rich by giving people what they want.

This whole rant is poorly written and riddled with obvious holes. Twitter is full of ads BECAUSE users don't value the service all that much, not the other way around. If people were willing to cough up as much cash as they spend time on Twitter and demanded an ad free one then that's what they'd get. People value a free ad supported Twitter over a premium one though. Just like with most other web apps they use. So that's what the market gives them.

Did the author stop to think that people might actually want smart luggage, valet dry cleaning, or weed delivery? On face value those all sound like the kinds of things people want to me. Drinking water to Africa? I know far more people that smoke weed regularly than I do people that care about how Africa is doing. Perhaps the author is just misinformed as to how self interested people are and is confusing business accommodating that as forcing it? Shooting the messenger so to speak. The day people start caring about Africa more than they do about getting high, YC will be full of a ton of startups to that effect.

YC invested in 5 different career websites and the author claims this as evidence that PG thinks we need 5 competing career websites. I can't read that as anything other than disingenuous. Even the most casual reader of PG would understand that he expects most startups to fail.