You'll have to enlighten me. What are the better ways? Why should you not own copyright to that which you produce?
So we built a fake framework on top of something plentiful and cheap to copy, to make it more expensive so some people can make money out of it.
How do you suggest an author (artist, musician, etc) make a living, if it takes them 6 months of normal working hours to produce a book and they get an expected $0 of revenue from that book?
We need to stop assuming that having no copyright means that the work cannot be monetized. It just can’t be monetized as if it was a physical object or service rendered. Vinyl records, tee shirts, patronage, book signings, lectures, anything that isn’t copyright dependent can be monetized easily.
The fans of art are aware that paying for it will help create more art they like. This is a personal connection that the fan has with the artist and keeps the art accessible for the casuals.
Copyright also allows more creators to create without requiring them to be a live personality as well; to split their time between creating and hustling for money.
I'm not sure I follow, my understanding is that patronage, say from the Medici family, led to a proliferation of art.
The difference is that the original instance of the work potentially required considerable time and money, whereas its copies are essentially free to produce. There's no difference between the bits of the "original" and the bits of each copy, but concluding that copies of a work should be free for all because the act of creating that copy is free, is fallacious and intentionally misleading.
What hit album have you (and your band-mates) written and performed for free?
What feature-length, CGI enhanced movie have you produced, cast, and distributed for free?
What TV show have you produced, cast, and distributed for free?
I'm not trying to call you out specifically, but your post uses "I", so I'm responding appropriately. For better or worse, garage bands, open source developers, and patreon writers are the vast minority of copyright users.
You don't want to use that line of argument, since authors and musicians are among the very few categories of workers with that privilege. As much as I agree with you (and actually think that privilege to be expanded to all workers), you won't find any solidarity from the common public on that line.
Don't forget software developers. All of our various licenses (and even our work-for-hire for various companies) relies upon copyright as well.
There's also reporters, photographers, journalists, YouTube content creators, TV, and movies, just to name a few off the top of my head.