Neither the_af nor I are saying that all the writing should be done without the authors being paid for it. We asserted, twice!, that professional authors and publishing industry are OK. What we say is that the published authors who earn a living by writing are not the only source of writing. If all the publishers, the whole industry, would go bankrupt tomorrow, the Web novels would still get new chapters, new fanfics would still get written, new essays would still be put on blogs, new comment threads would still appear, and so on.

Being paid for writing is great. It's just that the paid writing is not all writing - some people write simply to be read, without needing or wanting to be paid for it.

Writing code is different, because it's a means of self-expression only in small part.