"If/when production is free you don't even need to compensate the creators. They can get whatever they want, like any other guy, and they'll create only when they feel like it and not (say) once per year to pay bills and buy stuff."
If history is a guide, I'll say that the inventors themselves won't want to share with you or I. They want to be compensated in some fashion for their inventions. Be it money or power, they'll demand control of our use of their creations. So, I can see how an inventor in our current social structure would become like Immorten(sp?) Joe but without the nuclear wasteland.
The real answer is we wait and see but my belief is that with prices falling to zero the greedy kind of person is going to be at a disadvantage. Probably there is a threshold. If there is need of very little money then enough good content will be made available for free because authors will keep creating no matter what and there will be little money to pay them anyway. Then the ones who insist getting more than claps or a legion of followers (that's power) will get less and less.
If history is a guide, I'll say that the inventors themselves won't want to share with you or I. They want to be compensated in some fashion for their inventions. Be it money or power, they'll demand control of our use of their creations. So, I can see how an inventor in our current social structure would become like Immorten(sp?) Joe but without the nuclear wasteland.