You’re really getting out of your way to miss my point. The number of professional writers is some orders of magnitude bigger than the number of billionaires, so much so that taking some arbitrary subset of writers of approximately the same size is easily done.
Another counter example (because I’m really nice like that): some contemporary French writers, just from memory:
Annie Ernaux
JMG Le Clezio
Amélie Nothomb
Michel Houellebecq
Erik Orsenna
Virginie Despentes
Patrick Modiano
Christine Angot
Jean Echenoz
Sylvain Tesson
Marie Ndiaye
Virginie Grimaldi
Marc Levy
Alain Finkielkraut
Michel Onfray
Mélissa da Costa
Andrei Making
François Cheng
JC Rufin
Yes I know, it’s not 43, but I could easily go to my local bookshop and find 180 more, and again 43 billionaires is a lot for 70 million inhabitants. In any case the number of 500 writers in the article is laughable.
But that’s not the main point. What gets on my nerves is that the author of the article is cherry picking facts to entertain an idea. I could deliberately try something like “but you know there are more astronauts than true painters” and refute everything opposed to this with No true Scotsman fallacies.
The article proves absolutely nothing and the author makes a mess of logical thinking, while managing to blur what the wider perspective is supposed to be.
How many of those people are making more than $50k per year at it though?
It’s not “no true Scotsman” if there’s a defined dollar value that makes someone, so to speak, a Scotsman. I mean for all I know you are right and there are plenty who are supporting themselves doing it- but the point is not that writers don’t exist; it is that the number of them who are making a living without some other means of support is way smaller than it should be.
You’re really getting out of your way to miss my point. The number of professional writers is some orders of magnitude bigger than the number of billionaires, so much so that taking some arbitrary subset of writers of approximately the same size is easily done.
Another counter example (because I’m really nice like that): some contemporary French writers, just from memory:
Yes I know, it’s not 43, but I could easily go to my local bookshop and find 180 more, and again 43 billionaires is a lot for 70 million inhabitants. In any case the number of 500 writers in the article is laughable.
But that’s not the main point. What gets on my nerves is that the author of the article is cherry picking facts to entertain an idea. I could deliberately try something like “but you know there are more astronauts than true painters” and refute everything opposed to this with No true Scotsman fallacies.
The article proves absolutely nothing and the author makes a mess of logical thinking, while managing to blur what the wider perspective is supposed to be.
How many of those people are making more than $50k per year at it though?
It’s not “no true Scotsman” if there’s a defined dollar value that makes someone, so to speak, a Scotsman. I mean for all I know you are right and there are plenty who are supporting themselves doing it- but the point is not that writers don’t exist; it is that the number of them who are making a living without some other means of support is way smaller than it should be.