[timmaxw]

The non-wealthy regularly pay for books, music, movies, video games, etc. Hollywood is a $40B/year industry. All these industries follow a model of "make a work of art, then sell infinite copies"; this makes it possible to sell the copies at reasonable prices. These prices are appropriate, and the non-wealthy pay them.

The "high art" world, on the other hand, fetishizes the original physical work of art. If an expert painter spends weeks on a painting, then they must sell it for enough money to cover "weeks of an expert's income"; so of course only wealthy people will be able to afford it. How is this price more "appropriate" than the prices that non-wealthy people pay?

[BobaFloutist]

Non wealthy people are largely not willing to pay for books, movies, videogames (I will admit to not knowing about music) what it actually costs to make them. The industries are able to sidestep this by underpaying (all but the highest profile) artists and massively scaling up marketing budgets, but people routinely underestimate the time and effort involved in producing art, even the "infinite copies" version.

[timmaxw]

> Non wealthy people are largely not willing to pay ... what it actually costs to make them

The general public pays enough money to pay the artists' salaries, plus the marketing budget and all the other costs. Otherwise Hollywood would go out of business.

[throwaway8877]

There are many forms of art. In many cases people can get for themselves cheap reproductions and could plaster their bedrooms with it if they ever wanted. Or if that is not good enough for them and they can't get original works of some famous expensive artist then they can find some starving ones and get their works.