[paganel]

> How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance?

I'm not the OP, but seeing as most of my favourite authors are already dead (some have been so for more than a century) I would so: "not so much". The "would someone think of the content creators" mantra kind of works (up to a point) in the music and movie industries, where Taylor Swift doesn't compete against long-time dead J.S. Bach, nor does Star Wars compete against Melies's films, while any new fiction author has to compete against long-time dead authors like Proust, Kafka, Joyce or Ray Bradbury.

[kevinr]

I'm glad you're finding works you enjoy among the classics!

I have a long fondness for Bradbury, Shelley, Conan Doyle, etc., but they didn't write, oh, Hal Duncan's VELLUM, or Christopher Barzak's THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING, or Silvia Moreno-Garcia's SIGNAL TO NOISE---I don't think they could have been written before the last decade or so, and I don't see that they compete any more with Proust than Taylor Swift does. There will always be a market for new fiction.

[cr1895]

But what about, for instance, the translators of the modern editions of Kafka's work? Or the musicians who play Bach's music today?

[EliRivers]

Just out of interest, would any of them still be alive if they'd had health insurance?