For example, say I live in Ancapistan and I am a writer. I sign a contract with a publisher for (let’s say) a percentage of every book sold. The book is published. But competitors copy the book and sell it at a significantly lower price, because they don’t need to kick back a percentage to the writer. Does this mean that writers in Ancapistan will be left sucking wind?
The King of Sex and Tea Bags
Well, first of all, who am I to forbid anyone from sucking anything, as long as they aren’t aiming to suck my property? And secondly, I don’t understand why all the authors of questions about ancap are convinced that it’s some kind of fairy tale where a magic market arrives and solves any problem.
The market doesn’t solve all problems, only those for which there is a voluntary, solvent demand. A writer wishing to earn a living through their talent must understand that for this to happen, people must be found who are willing to voluntarily reward that talent with money. They can search for these people personally or hire intermediaries, but the wider the search, the more opportunities a devotee of the talent has to pay the writer in one form or another—and the more brilliant the talent, of course—the greater the profit.
I provide admirers of my talent with several diverse ways to reward me with money—from direct transfers in bits to various indirect routes, such as subscribing to a live channel, donations for a guaranteed quick answer to a question, or even indirect ones, like referral links to various useful services. I could earn more if it weren’t for the self-limitation of maintaining anonymity (for example, by selling the right to have dinner with me or hosting streams) and my reluctance to bother with complex business models (for example, selling merch). I could earn nothing at all if I refused donations, even when they are literally shoved into my hands.
Hard copies of texts in the form of paper books are a kind of merch today. What share of sales the merch producer allocates to the writer depends solely on the merch producer’s desire to donate to the writer. But even if they don’t pay the writer a single satoshi, they still contribute to the writer’s promotion, because that is the primary function of merch. And then the promoted writer can earn more from a single stream than they could have received from a print run of books.
P.S. Of course, an answer to a similar question has already been published in this channel, and the answer was also similar, so I apologize to the early readers of the channel for the repetition—but now they can choose which of the versions they liked more.
