The old model was designed to split the development costs among all of the readers. Just who is going to write books? Only people with government grants and the rich folks who can self-fund?
We should at the very least demand that public money go to public wealth generation. So under the current 100+ year copyright regime, nothing copyrighted.
[0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/WebVault/ebooks/LJSLJ_EbookUsage_Pu...
If you can’t feed yourself writing then you have to have a job, which means you won’t have nearly as much time (or energy) to write. Writing long form work is a very long, draining process. That’s why it’s a full time career for many.
I’d love to shoot documentaries I care about all the time but if I’m not getting paid it simply isn’t viable.