> Libraries are not free. They're paid for out of taxes, and my local council is very forceful in collecting them. Libraries tend to buy most of their books (and pay lending fees to the authors most of the time).

But you must admit that authors make more money on an individual book sale then the amount they make on a library lending the same copy to hundreds of people.

> No, it's not just about consent but the affect on others.

indeed, it seems like you want to profit off the labour of others by forcing them to set a specific price for their labour to artificially raise prices. Why should you or anyone else profit off the labour of others?

> Why are people so disgusted at my proposal that people are paid for work?

Because this is a strawman and not what you or other people are actually saying.

> Even Marxist-orientated societies like the USSR and Cuba pay/paid people (including writers!) for their work.

Why are you so surprised? Having fixed renumeration for work that everyone abides by like you are arguing for is generally a very marxist belief. The capitalist belief is that everyone should set their own prices and undercut each other as much as it makes sense for each individual to do so in order for the overall market to be most efficient.

The fundamental belief of capitalism is the free market. You are arguing against the free market.

> It is easy to do unpaid work when you have money already and many don't. I'm beginning to think I'm talking to a bunch of rich kids here.

Just because the good is free does not mean the labour is unpaid. I am paid to write software that ultimately becomes open source. The author of the book we are talking about is getting paid, probably more than most authors do.

People make money in all sorts of different ways.

> I edited Wikipedia for fifteen years. Despite some deletions, there are still thousands upon thousands of my words up there, and dozens of articles which I started. I never got paid anything for it, in fact I constantly had to deal with obnoxious behaviour on there from administrators who kept enshittifying content and leaving me rude messages. That's what destroyed my good will. Only a handful of admin ever bothered to thank me for it (and yes I did have some medals/badges).

Were you mislead in your decision to contribute to Wikipedia? Wikipedia doesn't pretend to pay contributors. To put it bluntly, part of being an adult is to accept responsibility for the things you do. If you contributed to Wikipedia, knowing the terms of that, that choice is on you.

That said, given that you are complaining about admins (who are also unpaid) i can't help but wonder if the issue at hand is simply that Wikipedia didn't think your labour was particularly valuable despite it being free.