This is simply it in most things now a days: The making of the idea is much much much harder and more expensive then the making of the product. You thinking might have worked like... eight thousand years ago. But we sorta moved past that.
Edit: Actually. I still have my question unanswered. Why is it immoral for people to not create when they feel they have not been promised enough compensation?
Oh wow this got longer than I originally intended (yay preview!). TLDR version:
A) Yes, it's hard to come up with ideas, but that doesn't mean it's hard to implement an already developed idea.
B) If you did a really good job on an idea and people value it highly after you were already compensated, too bad. If you want to get a lot of compensation, come up with another thing and I bet people will pay a lot for you to do so - unless you were a one-hit-wonder. After all, what about the flip side, where people paid you to create something, and it was valued far less than you got paid?
C) It's not that "not creating" for too little compensation is immoral - it's that preventing other people from using an already created idea is immoral.
D) I believe that eliminating all copyright and patent law and going back to a commission-based system (see Kickstarter, see famous artists in the 1600s) would be better for society, would be a more fair system, and would actually encourage more development because the risk is on the commissioner (not the artist) and the benefit is shared by everyone, not just a few.
The Full Rambling Dissertation:
What you've described is that it often takes effort to come up with a design for something that solves some particular need, be it functional (like a hammer) or more esoteric (like art or video games). I agree with this wholly. What I don't agree with is the way humanity has tied the cost of this effort into the cost associated with implementing that design once developed. In ages past, artisans got paid by people commissioning them to create a new work. They were paid to create the new work. Now, they were (as of the 1600s at least, which is very recent in human history) able to add some income by selling sheet music, but the bulk of the income came from commissioned work and teaching for quite a while before the income from selling sheet music started growing due to laws.
I would prefer society move back toward the commissioning model - and we see that this can indeed work with things like Kickstarter which is essentially "distributed commissioning." What's interesting to note about this model is that people are paid up front, and they keep getting paid if they do good work. This is vastly different from the "traditional" (which is actually quite modern) of spending lots of money to create a work then hoping to recoup costs and make a profit by selling copies.
If society moved to a more commission-based system, people would be fairly compensated for the value they actually provide: creating new works. Right now people are trying to extract more than that value through copyright law. The evidence that they are attempting to extract too much value is "uncompensated copying." There is absolutely zero value added in modern society for the ability to duplicate a (digital) work, so trying to extract compensation for copies has become like fighting physical laws. The value comes from a good experience (which is why theater movies, sporting events, and concerts can still command high ticket prices) and from good content - not from lots of copies.
What's really interesting is that the commissioning model works completely in the absence of IP law - because the artist agrees what his idea is worth up front, the commissioning individual (or group) pays for it, and the transaction is done. If the artist or inventor or whatever starts producing really popular works, then he can start charging more for the commissions.
What's also notable is that a commissioning system puts the risk on the commissioner rather than the artist. We would probably be better off (in terms of more things being created) if we moved the risk from the artist onto society at large instead.
Look at it this way: am I more willing to develop something if I have to put up my own money, even with patents and copyright, when there is a chance I might fail, or am I more willing to develop something that might fail if I'm guaranteed to get paid some sum right now to do the development work.
I would almost wager that the total cost to society is lower if you use the commissioning model, where you have groups that front lots of money to individuals for some task (technical or artistic), and the good artists get rewarded for good work not for a single "lucky" event but by doing something so good once they can win a subsequent commissions at higher prices.
This model would get rid of pretty much all the complaints against the current IP law (at least in the US). The only thing it doesn't address is the "creative lotto" where aspiring artists and inventors complain that other people might "use their work" without paying them for it. My answer would be: you were already paid for it.
Reductio ad absurdum: should we still be paying royalties to the family of the guy who first wrote down a number system? Today you'd probably likely see that patented as "a system and method for representing mathematical concepts using images created by hand gestures."
Anyway, that's probably all from me on this one for now... what's really interesting is I think (after many years) I have formed and solidified my opinion on what I think the solution to the IP situation should be: eliminate it all and return to the commissioning model.
Edit: The reason people will still commission works at risk is either because they know that if the work succeeds then their quality of life will go up ("sweet I have this new tool so the world doesn't have to work as hard to make widgets, so I can get more widgets for the same amount of money!"), or that they will get some kind of bragging rights ("I was the one that sponsored that artist!"). The big change is that people will get a more distributed, even benefit for the material improvements, rather than today when technological improvements disproportionately give a small number of people a large benefit for a fairly long period and slowly (if at all) add benefit to a large population. For instance: some new fuel economy technology by one automaker lines the pockets of some small number of people related to that automaker while only slightly reducing the fuel costs for that company's customers, and doesn't do anything for customers of all the other companies.
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