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Originally Posted by TSGracchus
Don't worry, I'll pay my taxes on it, which will go to services that help support you. The law says that's the compensation you're entitled to.
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I already pay for those services, I don't need you to. I want my compensation as I negotiate. After all, that's what your publisher and agent get to do, right? They've contributed, I've contributed, so I should get to negotiate. I want my name on the cover. Don't worry about any monetary renumeration.
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Ah, I see. So what you're saying is, that the fact that I couldn't have written the book without the contributions of lots of other people, and certainly couldn't publish it without the contributions of more, means diddly-squat unless they were helping me on purpose?
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Yes. If you truly couldn't have written the book without contributions from lots of other people then either you are stealing their ideas (plagiarism), or you are stealing their labor (by stealing the computer you wrote it on, the paper and ink you printed it with, the binding your publisher put on it, etc.) What do you call it when someone takes things without permission? Joint effort?
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That's a pretty convenient distinction for your purposes, dude.  However, it's not one I'm willing to recognize. If someone's actions helped me to survive, or gave me ideas that I incorporated into my writing, the fact that they didn't do these things deliberately for my benefit or with my book in mind doesn't in any way change the fact that my book was not a completely individual effort undertaken in a vacuum.
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Then give them credit in your bibliography and pay them for their effort.
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The first sentence above is false. The second sentence above is true, but the first does not follow from the second. I hope that is clearer.
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Much, thank you.
Did you wake up this morning? If so, did someone else bring your brain to consciousness?
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You cannot atomize a work of art that way. For one thing, even my original thought wasn't completely original in the sense of being independent of the world around me. It was expressed in the English language, to start with, and I did not create the English language. I had read a great many works of English literature, as well as history, science, and so on, and held a large number of conversations with other people, before I wrote the first word. Can I truly say that even the most "original" of my thoughts was not influenced in any way by this earlier interaction with other persons living and dead? I don't think so.
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Okay, so we're back to your incapability to arrive at an original thought?
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All of these things are true. I could not wake up in the morning, not only without the contributions of other people, but also without the contributions of the entire planetary biosphere. Without those contributions, I would be dead, and so I would be unable to rise, move, or think.
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Wow! It's amazing we even exist as a species.
When someone else thinks for you, what does that feel like? Is it strange to have them move your muscles?
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Very well then. You have been in the position of having to work for the benefit of another. Or at least, a portion of the work you did went to the benefit of another, because if they were paying you the full value or your work in terms of revenue potential they would not have made any profit on what you did and so would not have hired you in the first place.
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Nope, I've been in the position of having to work for my own benefit. That I found someone else willing to trade for the work I do, who found value in paying for what I do, doesn't mean I was working for their benefit. I was working, and continue to work, for myself. My employers added their own effort on top of what I was doing, and were therefore able to make a profit, but they didn't do so for me - they did so for themselves. My employers weren't working for the benefit of those who chose to trade what they do for my employers products and services - they did so for their own benefit. And so on, and so forth.
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Being able to work the person in whatever way desired without legal limit, being able to sell them, being able to kill them. Add being able to do them physical harm short of death, too. Yes, I think that about sums it up.
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Aren't these all things any government could do to its citizens?
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 I know some who would suggest that.
Let's just say that the cooking of food predated civilization and leave it at that.
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Nah, too convenient. Let's try to arrive at what civilization means. You've argued eating cooked food is a characteristic of not just civilization, but a requirement of humanity. Yet we have entire populations which don't eat cooked food, yet would, by any measure, be considered civilized and their members human. That leaves us without a definition of "civilization."
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I'd say so. We have certainly exhibited unusual ability along those lines in adjusting to the radically different conditions of civilized life compared to those of precivilized life, and of modern industrial civilization compared to classical agrarian civilization. Most biologists would agree that we are a highly adaptable species. Do you dispute that?
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Not at all. I'm just eager to read how adaptability - the cornerstone of evolution - doesn't mean evolution. We're highly adaptable, adapted enough to live in civilization, but haven't become that way because we've evolved. Interesting.