Do I believe that when others choose to not buy your work, and buy something else instead and are happy with their choice, your output wasn't as valuable to them as you maybe thought?

Yes, I do.

In fact, I see that statement as nearly tautological.

I also believe that throwing people in jail if they don't value the same things as you is wrong.

Both of which are largely orthogonal to my original point though – which is that determination of value is a self-correcting process over evolutionary time spans. But I understand you wanted to shake your fist at the sky, in these difficult times.

Same with your OSS reference – I happen to publish several open source packages, used by thousands of companies around the world, which in total bring me about grocery-level income (~€500/month, pre-tax). So what?