You kinda skipped over the whole comparison thing there. Do you honestly think creating digital content should be paid comperable to those hand crafted artesians who actually have to MAKE 10,000 copies of their hand crafts in order to make their money, when digital content artists make it once and just send out copies?

Example: Let us say a Digital artist spends 500 hours making one 3D model and sells 1000 copies of it. All he/she is out in expenses are time and a small percentage of what they paid for the software tools they used to create said item. A Handcrafted merchant spends 500 hours actually making 1000 copies of a wicker basket. If all 1000 copies of that basket don't sell. They're out not just time and tools expenses. They're out material costs for the unsold items along with transportation costs for sold items as well. A Digital merchant only has to run off CD copies of their merchandise as needed if they aren't downloaded to begin with.

Sure some of the great artists left for greener pastures. That's to be expected of any kind of carreer minded individual. We still have plenty of great merchants still around making great quality items. Stonemason, You, Steve Shanks at PoserWorld, the list still goes on. Not all the merchants who left, left for strictly financial reasons.