The flipside: why should people everywhere in the world be asked to give up a large portion of their discretionary income to get access to educational materials that can be reproduced at zero marginal cost? What is the loss to society as a whole when we make pointless time sinks like Netflix and social media free but college textbooks unaffordable to many?

The internet allows us to give everybody on the planet access to world-class educational materials at practically no cost. This is so obviously a good thing for society as a whole that we should strive to see this future materialize. Yes, some authors will lose income, but society as a whole gains greatly when we fight artificial scarcity.

For what it's worth, I think authors should get compensated by some other means, especially when they write great books. But artificial scarcity isn't the answer, it never is.

(The current model is also unfair to authors because book sales follow a power-law curve where a handful of authors take practically all the winnings)