So the publisher just gets to keep the author’s share of their joint contribution to the economy simply because it hasn’t been realized yet?

If you want to stop inter generational wealth transfer, work to limit that directly. This is just moving the profits away from an individual (the author) to a corporation (the publisher).

Not if copyright expires at the author's death; then it transfers to society at large because the publisher doesn't have the sole right to publish it anymore.

(Not advocating for this per se, just pointing out copyright expiration doens't necessarily transfer wealth to the publisher)

No, because the idea is that the right to a special monopoly would disappear. So the price of a book would drop from print costs + copyright to print cost only via the magical hand of the market. The "authors share" is a wholly legal idea that exists because everyone agrees the authors should get something for their work.

There is a reason my fiction bookshelf is 60% 1700s/1800s classics like Wilde or or Austin instead of authors I prefer like Tolkien or Mervyn Peake. Books out of copyright are cheaper (less margin to be extracted) and more easily available from a local bookshop, so I've bought more of them over the years.

> We should be steering society ... > We want people ...

Who is we, may I ask?

I always laugh when I see people saying "we..". I always think "well, what are you doing on HN (or whatever) typing then? Get on with it! We don't want that!".

I think they're speaking French.