[QuantumIguana]

I wouldn't say travel has become cheaper

Why not? It has. A hundred years ago, a journey of just a few miles was often a pretty major event. Where I grew up used to have two county fairs, because the county was 90 miles wide. The second fair closed several years ago, although it had become an anachronism long before. The journey that was considered such a long trip a century ago became insignificant.

Taking this thinking backwards to the present day, do you think it is right to charge the individual for a ride on a public transportation system, (energy required for everything is supplied by the sun after all) Wouldn't it make more sense to charge the public for the system and allow everyone to ride as much as they wish to, funds for the system given by raising the tax rate for the transportation system??

Transit systems cost money, it has to be paid for somehow. You could have a system where it was paid for by taxes rather than by fares. But transit is pretty fungible; one bus ride is pretty much like any other. Books are not. Some books, many people will be willing to pay for, other books, few people will pay for.

But why do you feel that the purpose of writing books is to make money? Isn't the purpose of writing to let others share in the thoughts that you have had?? Any block to this end is WRONG. If you are writing books to put food on the table, why don't you just go outside and plant some carrots instead?

And then when would they write? People have to make a living. You would have writers only writing when they had some spare time. If you want authors to produce good books, you want them to be able to dedicate themselves to writing full time. They need not only carrots, but clothes and somewhere to live. My reducing writing to a hobby only done in spare time, you create the very block you say is wrong.

You have to believe that our culture will not let the most important (important being a subjective and flexible view) artists languish in hovels with nothing to eat. By not allowing creators to set prices of content on the network, the culture as a whole will be able to more adequately determine which artists should be compensated, this compensation would of course be in the hopes of a future art of the same caliber.

We already have a fantastically effective method for determining which artists should be compensated. People pick up a book, they look at the price, and they decide whether the book is worth $8.99. If they decide it is, they pay it. If not, they put it down, and consider some other book.

Money could be taken from an art fund, supported through taxes. Perhaps a bit of the defense budget could be moved toward this fund, and perhaps a few of those working in the defense department could then become artists, but that might just be wishful thinking...

That's a great idea... if you hate books. I have no interest in a book commissar deciding what books are worthy. It would result in widespread censorship. Only the approved books would be funded. I will decide for myself who gets compensated.

The system you propose takes compensation out of the hands of readers, and putting in the hands of some bureaucrat. That life-changing book doesn't get written because it doesn't make it through the committee. What is a life-changing book for you might not be life-changing for someone else.

An author can be successful in a niche market. If people as a whole determine who gets compensated, then these niches die. That means readers have less choice. Copyright for a limited time is the goose that laid the golden egg.