But there are still those of us who still (maybe naively at this point in history) believe that if you do things honestly, in good faith, and play by the rules, you should be able to make money too.
This isn't a knock toward cynicism or dishonesty. Rather a knock toward the fact that sales, and self-promotion are necessary if you want to make money (why are people going to buy your stuff if they don't know about it and its benefits to them aren't communicated clearly). Also realize that some people are bad actors (pirates) and you need to emotionally and financially protect yourself.
It isnt unreasonable or wishful thinking to expect to never be robbed. I shouldn't have to lock the door to my apartment, I could probably get away with not locking the door to my apartment, but I lock it anyways.
That discussion needs to happen, and bad actors who won't recognize that they're bad actors are a huge problem.
But when an honest author games a system that tries to take advantage of them and manages to make that work, that's something I applaud.
A focus on 'greed' or 'honesty' is missing the mark on what I'm saying here. We currently have an economy built on a foundation of historical expropriation, enclosure, colonialism, subsidy, regulatory capture, rent-seeking, etc, and heavily biased towards the resultant monopolies/oligopolies. As a consequence, prices are set at this inflated level of profit, and those who perform labor outside of the interests of these corporations typically aren't able to afford the costs of living (especially without breaking the law). "Greed" isn't really the issue here; the issue is systemic privilege born through violence.
>History has shown me that it doesn't matter what economic and political system is instituted
It's pretty intuitive that a political system is generally going to be favorable towards those who instituted it, outside of happenstance benevolence from a political elite.