And it seems the results of your other solution assumes people will do creative things for free... which you otherwise assume they won't.
In my mind, you create because you want to or because you need to, because you enjoy the action of creation or because you can't
not create. Sure, you can do it just for money, but that's rarely connected to caring about what happens to your creation.
Sadly, you are correct. Despite everything, I can't stop myself from creating. I know that nobody gives a fuck about what I do, and so far the five novels I've put up on Amazon haven't even earned back the $12 I spent on the covers. Frankly, at this rate, they probably never will.
It would literally make no difference if, after writing a story down, I simply deleted the file. It's just that somehow I can't make myself do that.
So I definitely don't do it for the money, because I'm not making any. And I definitely don't do it to share the stories, because that would require someone to share them with, and there isn't anyone. (Not literally, figuratively.)
But.
It's not even the eternal control. This is the part where the money comes in. I simply can't tolerate the idea that any random scavenger can take my work and make money with it. (Or at least try to.) That's why I put it into my "solutions list" that PD works should have a ban on being profited from.
You use the PD character, then you can't accept money for the work. You republish that PD story, then you can't accept money for it. You can do it, but you can't make a profit from it.
That would make sure that only those people who, as you put it, feel a spiritual kinship with the ideas in question will work on it and spread it, rather than some mercenary who thinks that his third-rate supernatural thriller will sell exponentially better if he can slap "Sherlock Holmes" into the title. The mercenaries, those who
do these things only for the quick and easy buck, they would go away.
The idealists? They're welcome to it.