If someone steals from my bank account I certainly CAN notice it even if I don't immediately, and I'm certainly worse off.

That's such a bad straw man I wonder if you're really supporting the position you claim to be supporting. Maybe you're just trying to give it a bad name.

Your opinion isn't on visual work, but visual property. You don't demand to be paid for your work - your labor. Rather you traded that for the dream of being paid rent on a capital object, in perpetuity (or close enough). Artists lost to the power-mongers when we bit at that bait.