[WarOnPrivacy]

The same thing I eat for dinner. I eat based on I get from work, that people are willing to pay for.

Not all my effort turned into dinners tho. And some types of work once paid for dinners but can't any more.

My #4 son is an artist/content creator. He eats based on what his non-art employment will buy. Perhaps one day people will find his art desirable and he could eat from that. It'll be a case where he worked long and hard on a project, was paid once for it and that's it for that.

That's what reality looks like for all artists - excepting a small percentage.

All that said, I really wouldn't want his dinner to come at the expense of everyone else being restrained by massive system of corrupt, draconian law that rigidly controls everyone's behavior for 150 years, primarily benefits wealthy and powerful rent-seeking corporations, is readily applied to censorship and is more likely to knee-cap other artists than to provide them anything like a living wage.

That seems indistinguishable from evil.

[kranke155]

Sometimes people use evil systems for good.

[WarOnPrivacy]

True! Although I can't think of any at the moment. You?

[kranke155]

Sure. Most artists I know live doing advertising, film art, game art. Sometimes the film / movie sucks, is actually a bad thing, or the advertising is intrusive or for a terrible product. They keep doing it.

You might know some brilliant programmers yourself who do great work while funded by an ad giant like Meta or Google. Sometimes less nice people, like the Saudi Arabian Sovereign fund, funds companies like Uber.

I struggle to think of any evil system that isn’t warped into doing some good by someone in it. That’s the complexity of it all.