Maybe they were an acceptable compromise in a time before e-books and e-readers, but they are neither fair to users, nor do they seem high enough to fairly compensate content creators without their normal revenue channels.

If the intention behind it is a kind of public subsidy for content creation: Sure, there are much worse things to spend tax money on.

But please do it properly then, i.e. something like a "public Spotify/Netflix" for books and films that correctly attributes view counts, rather than just handing money almost exclusively to already popular/financially stable creators as measured by past sales records.