And yet here you are, posting in MicrostockGroup.
Right!
How more simple and true could that be? I don't go to a special interest group website, just to tell them I don't agree. Yet people just can't stop coming to MSG and writing how terrible Microstock is? 15 years later the same good old days stories.
ps I might have shot my last roll of film, which was out of date, in 2013. Times change, the world changes, markets change. Stock photography isn't what it was and never will be again.
To answer the OP, we are producers of a commodity that the agencies mark up and market. Supply and demand, plain and simple.