I guess if someone pays a price acceptable to the artist, it doesn’t matter to me if they are trying to resell it at a profit. The artist got paid an amount that they were willing to accept.
If a reseller is paying lots of artists their asking rate for a lot of pieces, that’s even better. The reseller is taking the risks, but the artists are getting paid.
But if a reseller is underpaying artists, (think record labels, publishing houses, movie studios, or other cartel-type businesses.), though, the situation flips. There’s almost no way to bypass them, because the cartels are also the gatekeepers to the only available distribution networks. Instead of a fair price, it becomes a pay-to-enter fraud, where their payment is the rights to your own products, and a contractual obligation to produce even more for virtually no money. They’ve switched from patrons to vampires, and for them I have nothing but loathing.
