In Denmark, they don’t need a law that says you must wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle. Everyone in Denmark knows this so they give cyclists a bit of extra room. Drivers slow down to pass a cyclist when they see one. They know what’s needed to keep people safe and continue letting the culture thrive so laws don’t have to.
When everyone knows the rules, it’s a culture. When it’s in the culture, you don’t need laws because it’s ‘just what everybody does’. The problem with ‘just what everybody does’ is that it’s hard to change because a lot of people need to agree. “Just what everybody does” is the sort of thing that kept slaves in slavery, women from voting, and poor people poor – it keeps things the same as they always were.
In art, artists are ‘supposed to struggle’ financially and emotionally, it’s the way things have always been. It’s just what all artists do.
Lawyers are the ones who change laws, but people, people can change culture. If artists are supposed to struggle, but don’t want to, we don’t need to convince lawmakers to make the change for us. All we need to do is change what’s normal. When enough of us are doing it, it becomes the culture.