The owners of and investors in publishing houses, movie studios, and music labels tend to expect something beyond 'making a living'. Whereas those who actually generate cultural phenomena (our culture, aka the shared framework of references that allows us to define an us) see little to nothing from work that is foundational to multi-billion dollar media empires. Not making a living means that the class of people most free to engage in cultural creation are those who are independently wealthy.

'Follow your passion' brings with it the perversity of if you love it, then that should be reward enough. Much in the way that doctors and nurses have been labeled as 'heroes' is used as a smoke screen to not increase pay or alleviate working conditions because you love your work and can you really be a hero if you expect money from it?

One way or another, it seems, human society appears bent on perpetuating the idea that some people should generate value for others without compensation in regards to that value.

Ha ha what? The problem is there are low barriers to entry to working in the creative arts so there's huge competion. It's like app development. Creating isn't enough. You need a marketing strategy.

Publishers OTOH diversify so can build their empires by backing multiple authors etc, some of whom break out.

Anybody with feet can run around a track. So athletics has, in that sense, a low barrier to entry. That doesn't make them Usain Bolt.

It's an interesting look past the mystification of how capitalism is claimed to work. Behind the curtain it is unable or unwilling to find a way to sustain the existences of the producers of goods that the public desires. Instead it relies on disposability. Burn a part out (and many do; it's particularly a problem among romance writers -- and on through Hollywood, the porn industry, et cetera) and replace. Rinse and repeat.

The question becomes: is it a system instated by humans and controlled by humans, or a system that has come to control humans, a meta system, global capital as a type of planet-wide intelligence analogous to an ant colony or the cells in an individual body, bent on its perpetuation at the necessary cost of any of those individual components.

It's an interesting system to discuss in the hypothetical. The genre, however, changes when or if one realizes the part you are in such a system as it exits. Of course, we all think we're special. There's always a war going on around us, but there isn't a bullet out there with my name on it; those shells rip others to pieces, not me.

Which, circling back, is why we need 'content creators'. We need Lovecrafts to distract us from the cosmic horror of ourselves and what we label reality.

I'm not sure why the downvotes. That's absolutely a fair comment. There are some cases where creative work can benefit your day job through visibility and related skills. (A talented amateur actor is probably going to be better at presentations for example. And being that really good presenter at your company's user group event every year isn't going to hurt you.) But it seems a good point overall. Being great on some instrument probably isn't going to be a great argument for why you should get promoted at a non-music-related position.)

It's a bad comment because it totally misses the actual dynamics of the creative marketplace--that is, superstars-take-all. It has nothing to do with the "fun" of the work. The superstars in the creative industries are making 7-8 figures and everyone else is making 4-5 figures while trying to become a superstar.

And I would say that going into a field that requires hitting the jackpot to not be waiting tables as a day job isn't a great strategy from an expected earnings perspective. (Which isn't to say people shouldn't do it if that's their thing.)

I would also say, people make more money doing stuff that's hard. (and of course the bar goes up)

I'd say "hard" is a necessary but not sufficient condition. People (individually or in the aggregate) also need to be willing to pay you specifically a lot of money for what you specifically bring to the table that, in many creative fields, requires being very top tier (and lucky).

In the arts, the equivalent of a mid-tier developer makes jack squat.

Fortunately for me, writing compilers is fun.

Doing something that’s fun and hard.

If it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun.

I have to say this to my all the time to my friend who got into Harvard from across the pond who seems to deliberately pick "easy" courses with lots of book work and therefore burns out e.g. if you want to learn complex analysis, the hard course that requires thinking will probably have less tedious homework to do for example.

It's the same with competition. Who wants to enter a competition that's an easy win? There's no joy in that. Far more fun competing with people who are very good.

Must be fun!