This helped me feel better about my perennial brokeness, but was otherwise a straw man. Since then, I've met some of the folks who produce traditional porn, and they're doing a bit better, but not much. Writers bitch about insensitive editors and slow or nonexistent royalty checks. Artists are tortured by inadequate fees and by art directors who reject their most sensitive and heartfelt work in favor of commercial dreck. Performers put in days under hot lights and nights carrying hot trays of restaurant food.
Publishers writhe in the twin grip of spiraling paper costs and punishing distributor discounts.
And so on. We're not unionized. We're not subsidized. We're usually not even too well organized. We're just sitting here exercising our imaginations, libidos, and creativity to help make people smarter and happier about sex.