Neither art nor music are competitive activities. Good poetry is a wonderful thing, no matter the source.
They certainly are! Especially when money is on the line, and the best musicians, actors, and artists are extremely well compensated making their positions extraordinarily competitive.
>Good poetry is a wonderful thing, no matter the source.
Sure, but I think you neglect to consider the defeating feeling it would bring to dedicate your entire life to mastery of a subject only to be completely and utterly, hopelessly outclassed. Almost every such person is already hopelessly outclassed by someone in their field, but those people are so rare that they have tremendous exclusivity surrounding them. Compare that to the scenario of having any 12 year old with a smart phone being able to instantly produce a totally novel and dominate piece of artistic expression developed by an algorithm on their phone. Then recognize that in a world with that level of AI sophistication, there'd be very little of value that a human can even offer other humans at that point. It would be... not great to the psyche, economy, or society.
What is your definition of best in this context? As far as I know, taste in art is very personal... Artists I consider the best are often very far from well compensated.
But, in almost any particular human artistic sub-niche with it's own definition of "best", the same principle will hold, with compensation and skill level being well correlated. It's also typically not even close to linearly correlated either, most of the compensation lies at the far tail of "best".
It's nice to be paid, and it's nice to be recognized, but I think art has its own form of wealth - otherwise, why make art? Why not just seek recognition, or money?