> People with a conscience and an ounce of empathy will always value creative work if they themselves intend to make a profit with it in someway.

Is that empathy, or just self interest / good business? If I need a product I can't produce for my business to make a profit I'd better be giving my supplier a cut, lest they stop supplying me. With intangibles it's more fluid than with good bound by scarcity, but novel expressions of creativity become not-novel pretty quickly and, inevitably, you're going to need to go back to the well.