Thank you for this. Once upon a time, I used to put out a newsprint publication. A real life paper covering a niche sport culture, but based on the old countercultural underground newspapers, including comics. It was fun while it lasted but advertising came too slowly for it to last more than a year. In the meantime, I was lucky enough to pay our writers and artists. Some of them were not cashing their checks and when I followed up about it, the common excuse was that they liked what I was doing and felt like they were contributing to the funds by not cashing their checks. I thanked them and told them to cash their checks! Because writing (and art production) is labor and labor is supposed to have value. Crazy, huh? Such an easy point to make, but so hard to understand.