[googletazer]

>For example: good for Rowling but why aren't more authors able to make a living writing?

Because consumers don't like them as much. The market increasingly is a winner take all, moving away from the 20%-80% split. How many books did you buy this year? How many were from indie/unknown authors?

[mulmen]

You're missing the forest for the trees. We provide huge rewards to a small number of people but why? Yes, consumers don't like them as much but if that means some people starve and others make billions maybe that's a problem with our socioeconomic system?

[TimPC]

Problem relative to what other system. As far as systems that exist, Democratic capitalism with a social safety net has produced less starvation per capita than any other socioeconomic system that has actually existed. Most stories of people attempting to implement a hand-wavey utopia have results where the human dead measure in millions. At this point theoretical Utopia's meet the standard of extraordinary claims, and consequently they require extraordinary evidence. How does this alternate system of yours work? Can people read what they want to read? Can people work where they want to work? Do companies get revenues based on how successful their products are? If all three of those things are true your premise is basically violated as far as I can tell. I don't like breaking any of those 3 things as I see the first 2 as fundamental rights and the third as the main successful way to reward creating actual value for real humans.

[mulmen]

So I guess we can abolish congress then?

Democracy contains a fundamental assumption that society is continually evolving. You're putting a lot of words in my mouth here. I don't think our current system is perfect, that does not mean I want to institute a dystopian centrally managed society. It means I understand the basic concepts of democracy, and nuance.

I don't think our current levels of wealth inequality are healthy or sustainable. Personally I'd like to see a wealth tax where you pay for the portion of the national economy you hold.

[PeterisP]

Because this matches their usefulness - in services that scale to a huge audience, the less-than-the-best aren't useful much.

Assuming that I'm going to read 50 books of a certain niche genre that has 5000 writers worldwide, the best 50 writers in that niche have a significant economic value (and thus deserve huge rewards, because we want them to continue writing) the next 50 have some value, and the remaining 4900 writers in that niche are useless, they can do it as a hobby if they want but we're not going to support them much - we don't need their writing, because someone else can do it better. Why would I ever want to read the 101st (according to my preferences) best book if I'll never get the time to read the 100 books that I'd like more than that? It might as well have never been written as far as I care.

This is the inevitable result of abundance, of having more choices than you'd possibly need. Think about this from the perspective of food - if you want an apple, and are walking by a tree that has a hundred apples of various ripeness. The few most ripe apples are useful - you pick one of them; if you want a second one or have a friend with you, then you might want a few more... but the 90% that aren't as attractive have zero value if the tree has more apples than anyone could ever want to consume. And this is the case for writing; there's more fiction writing than anyone might ever be able to read, thus you're inevitably reading just a small fraction of it, and if something's good but worse than the many alternatives, then it's worthless.

The same applies in any industry that scales. I want to watch a top-10 footballer, but the top 10000th is useless to watch (although they're really good, they're among the best 0.1% of the millions of soccer players worldwide); the same goes for music, software, all kinds of creative works.

[mulmen]

You are way down the rabbit hole of the JK Rowling example here and have completely missed the overall point. My argument is that the difference between the books you want to read and the rest is smaller than the economic outcomes would lead us to believe.

To make this even more clear, economic gain is disproportionately allocated to a few individuals at the expense of all other participants. It stops being a meritocracy and becomes a lottery for the producers funded by the capitalists at the expense of all other participants.

[googletazer]

>We provide huge rewards to a small number of people but why?

Thats what I asked you. How many indie authors have you supported by buying their books and spreading the wealth. Or do you have a better way to spread the wealth apart from the government taking it by force from whatever class it deems as enemies of the people this week?