To be fair to the argument, there is scarcity of the labor that produces the data and that must be compensated somehow.

That's true, but the labor that actually produced the data is not receiving the full value of the money that people pay to access the data. If the money went directly to the creators, I think people (and myself certainly) would feel much more amenable to paying for it.

Enters Patreon and similar type of things where you directly support contributors.

However, $15/month for "everything-ish", or do you Patreon every content creator you watch? If you do anything around $5/month, thr budget might start hurting on the other side.

I can’t imagine people subscribing to Disney’s patreon, or to key grip #8’s patreon. That model will never work industry-wide.

The scarcity of the labor is completely disconnected from the artificial scarcity of data.

Agreed, but therein lies the problem. The markets for our needs are still markets based on scarcity, and therefore artists need to operate within them even while producing a product that exists in a post-scarcity environment. To date no one has developed a better way to deal with this dichotomy than to impose some form of artificial scarcity in the post-scarcity space.

I personally find that solution unappealing, but admit to no better option than to deal with it in most cases. Some of the people producing work I like can be compensated through patreon or twitch or some other means, but not all.

With physical books, the cost of the pages was never that significant anyways. Same with VHS. The scarcity was never in the medium, so I fail to see why suddenly it matters.