[205guy]

My point was we're trying to judge the merit of an entire system by one tiny facet. What's a fair amount of money for this guy to get if it's not X? What if I was a QA tester and I complained on my blog that my dev team was unfairly closing the bugs I open as invalid, thus depriving me of my bug-based bonus? Seems crummy, but maybe that just how the industry goes and I'm still living comfortably.

Obviously, there is no "right" to earn a living in the legal sense of a right. But it seems moral to say that if someone puts in average work, and they're average talent, they should make an average living out of some industry that is still in demand.

You raise an interesting point about the producers and salespeople of the industry. Why shouldn't they have a "right" to make an average living as well. Indeed, but they could also follow the technology, eg from "curating" a record store to "curating" a recommendations website. Or, since they also have more portable jobs, they could produce or sell other products or talents.

The musician, on the other hand, is stuck. If musicians can't live from their music, even if they are in demand, will stop making music for us consumers.

[ThomPete]

You last claim is simply not true. There have never in the history of human history been so many artists out there. If anything it's the amount of competition amongst musicians that is pushing the returns down.

[gburt]

"Average work with average talent" should NOT equal average wage because people should be self-selecting in to things they are above average at as a profession. As a society, we don't want a bunch of mediocre musicians, we want only good ones.

This sort of explains why many areas are winner takes all or extremely exponential in wage/quality.

[bisrig]

When you take the timeline of the history of the planet Earth into account, there was a not so distant past where an artist, musician, etc. could make a living based solely on the support of a single benefactor. It seems as though the past 50 years is likely to be seen as a blip on the trend of how an artist is compensated for their work.