> The market withholds food when they tell you to pay first before taking it home. The same is fair for an author.
Food is finite. When you buy material goods, you subtract from the seller's supply of goods and add to your own. It's impossible to create new goods out of nothing. Since there isn't enough for everyone, an economy naturally arises.
Information is infinite. Copying and transmitting data is not only trivial, it is natural. That's why people came up with ways to create artificial scarcity. The only cost associated with human knowledge and art is that of creating it. After it's created, information costs $0.
All data, all files on a computer, they're essentially just really big numbers that humanity happened to discover. Once the number is known, modern computers make it possible to copy and transmit it for almost $0. Paywalls? Only one person needs to pay in order to get copy and distribute it to everyone else.
Nobody is saying creators shouldn't be compensated. We're saying they need a new business model. It's the 21st century. You no longer need huge printing presses in order to make copies of something at scale. It's as easy as copy paste.