Doesn't this quotation strongly apply to software engineers? I find engineers have more trouble applying the same logic to software engineering, while applying it to artists, especially musicians, without much reflection.
Engineers have always been compensated for custom production. There's nothing new about that. We have more in common with tailors than with tycoons of imaginary property.
They don't; that's simply a fact, no one is owed or deserves a living, you have to work for it like everyone else. If there is demand for what you do, monetize it, if you can't, then pick another career because the market has spoken. You can't mandate that X career deserves to be paid, the market does that naturally via demand.
> It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work.
Stating facts about their lack of being entitled to anything isn't expressing contempt. If they don't want people accessing their work, they don't have to publish it, but expecting perpetual payment anytime anyone looks at what you put out is absurd; intellectual property is a flawed notion that only worked well when distribution was a challenge. With virtually free distribution, you cannot prevent information being free, i.e. copying, and thus you cannot rely on making money from distribution; you better learn how to make money performing live, as has been done historically.
What you've also missed is how sick and tired techies are of artists and musicians seeking to "deserve a good living" by controlling techies. To express contempt for our work while expecting unlimited cringing subservience.
Why is it that so-called "artists" are so quick to demand creative control over the work of others who work in different mediums? I have a few guesses.
In any event, I suspect that you don't know many "so-called artists". May you have a long and prosperous career, and retire young before the market value for your passions is reduced to zero.
An album in which an artist has key creative control is not bespoke labor. It's self-expression, a very different form of work. Software engineers generally perform bespoke, custom, specified labor for others who control what that labor looks like and produces. For this, said engineers are compensated for their time and labor. Said engineers do not generally expect to own the result, just as a portrait artist does not expect to own the commissioned piece.
May you have a long and prosperous career in which you fit your business model to the times in which you live. With luck, you'll even manage what the rest of us have - a way to profit from your passions.