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Gods and stars, not another recommendation to go back to the Patronage system! Patronage benefited less than a single percent of potential artists, and left all the rest without means for self-expression, forcing most of them to abandon artistic careers; in short, it was a very inefficient system.
No, copyright doesn't guarantee income. But more importantly, it guarantees that if income is to be made, the creator gets first crack at it, and has protection against his creation being stolen and earning him nothing. That, plus an optimistic belief that an invention would indeed be worth something, was usually all a creator/inventor needed to blow off his day job, create, and hope for the best.
Without it, most potential inventors/creators never got out of their farms or other menial jobs.
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