But most writers and artists are poor people. You wrote a very literate response the the ROI issue. Your literacy reflects that great, grand, wonderful critical and creative tradition of the English Language and Literature tradition. ROI is a crude instrument. Reason takes us a long way.
Rationalism is good.
But the notion of ROI has, in my view, no significant place except as a minor corrective to lunacy in expectations of financing for digital libraries or any othet institution. And ROI, as it is conventionally used, will never acccommodate a full understanding of this extraordinary story.