These are all interesting questions (personally if paid software would push things away from the npm/js ecosystem of a million tiny packages world in favor of fewer, more curated things, I think that's almost reason enough right there ;) ) but I think it's an incomplete list.

Should a contractor be able to retire off building one house?

Should an actor be able to retire off residuals from one movie?

Should a studio executive with an MBA be able to retire off of one year's salary despite contributing nothing to the films that people enjoyed?

Should a wealthy person be able to retire off their parents having a buttload of cash?

I would not be opposed to a world that incentivizes continual work for everyone but it would have to actually apply to everyone. And vice versa, if we want to give people outsized financial rewards and power for one-big-hit type things, why is it that we do it for middleman-shit like stock trading or big-corporate-management-pointy-heads vs, say, writers and actors? Or VCs instead of software developers? HN in aggregate seems to be more sympathetic to complaints of line-level software devs against non-technical managers than to complaints of actors or writers against non-creative managers ;).

> I would not be opposed to a world that incentivizes continual work for everyone

Should my parents never have been able to retire? My mom retired at 53 after working on the school system for 30 years because her pension was invested in stocks. My dad retired at 55 based on stock in his company - he was factory worker. They are now 80 and 78 and have four checks deposited in their accounts every month - social security, a pension and an annuity.

> Or VCs instead of software developers

I hope to retire one day based on my investments as a software developer based on earnings I made as far back in 1996

The current system does incentivize continuous work and also, more importantly, continuous efficiency improvement it just suffers from monopoly that the government is failing to correct or in this case that the government created to deal with a different type of market failure and then allowed to be extended unjustly. The problem isn't the system, its the government failing to actively use its existing laws to break up monopolies and especially failing to limit its own regulation that creates monopolies

What “monopoly” is there in content distribution? On the content distribution side there is Netflix, Disney, Warner/Discovery, Comcast/Universal/NBC, AppleTV, Paramount/CBS and Amazon Prime

Copyright, by definition, is a monopoly. You are confusing licenced distributors with the copyright owner where the actual monopoly is. Each of those don't individually distribute all content because copyright holders use their monopoly to limit distribution

That’s not by any reasonable definition a “monopoly” any more than saying I have a “monopoly” on my posts.

And either way, monopoly or not is irrelevant. If the writers weren’t able to get a fair deal because their was only one studio or distributor it would be a monopsony

The definition of monopoly from econlib: A monopoly is an enterprise that is the only seller of a good or service.

The definition of a copyright is an exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, etc an original work for a set period of time. It may include one or more additional rights depending on jurisdiction.

So by definition a copyright holder is the only seller of a creative work, aka they have a monopoly on that works public usage, which is very broadly defined.

I mean, you can draw your own conclusion but if you expect me to believe you aren't drawing with crayons you need to retract your previous statement.

Side note: what makes you think the writers own the copyright on their work? Generally they don't especially if they are paid to write something rather than presenting a finished work to multiple studios trying to sell it. You do havr the general definition of monopsony close to right but it had nothing to do with whether another part of the value chain is a monopoly, you can have both or many instances of both along a dingle products value chain.

Yes, if it's a paid product. Think of it as a commission and a fraction of a profit.

This isn't a new idea. In the past companies paid for every showing of a show and a small fraction went to the people who made it. This is important since most performers have an expiration date when they are no longer relevant. It gave them a road to long lasting success even if they can't get a new job.

The problem is that this doesn't work the same way for streaming. This biases actors against streaming and results in problematic incentives. It requires a new model.