I think automation only cares about increasing the output, not about the effort or exclusivity of the input. Since you propose reviewing history, let’s do it together:

• Artists used to perform for a single patron, getting paid for each performance.
• Amphitheaters allowed multiple patrons to attend each performance.
• Recordings allowed performances to be reproduced over and over.
• Copying allowed millions of patrons to reproduce the same recording multiple times, independently of each other.

Now LLMs are suddenly the preposterous advance? Nonsense.

Luddite propaganda is corporate propaganda is elitist propaganda, a step back towards less efficient ways of reaping the benefits of labor so it can be more easily controlled and restricted, an elitist approach where artists perform at the whim of someone wealthy enough to be able to afford them.

If you want to discuss the fair compensation for labor, we can start talking about total production, compensation inequality, an UBI system, or whatever. Don’t come in blindly claiming that cutting down technological labor amplification, is the only way to get paid enough to live… or that getting paid is even required to live in a post-scarcity world, much less that artificially imposed scarcity is something positive.