Maybe this post just shows that the market system is inefficient, is full of painful friction.

Maybe we should have an economy that does pay people purely to make popular & impactful works.

Personally, given how awful everyone else has been at supprting the maintenance & development of our base digital infrastructure, I start to feel like we should/must resort to governments funding open source. The social benefit created is immense, powers so much enterprise & creation. We should look after & care for these interests. Perhaps we need a socialistic social system that can do what capitalism seemingly cant- and actually, it sure seems like we could potentially make a lot more money by expanding & growing the base library of really good things we fund/support.

The tough love no-one-deserves-to-get paid view looks like it causes enormous self harm to industry & the world. Good things, good infrastructure to start from, to work atop, seems obviously to the public benefit. It shouldnt be such a hellish toil to try to keep these projects afloat, the very minimum possible bar. Society should be driven to expand the free things we people can do, expand the scope of human possibility. Expanding liberty seems like such an obvious goal, but it seems so bizarrely reviled, so bitterly naysayed, alas!