If you look at the numbers I don't think its possible this can be about entitlement culture. Book sales are up year over year recently. Yes, people are also stealing but this can't be the driving factor in such huge drops in author income, especially when someone is making more money off the consumer's purchases.

This is not just a problem in the writing game. Pretty much all sectors of the economy have been experiencing this weird trend where the industry is growing but the workers are making less money. Pretty much everywhere since the 70s.

You tagged this 'capitalism' so I was expecting to read something about that. Perhaps a tag like 'culture' or 'consumerism' would be more appropriate if what you're doing here is trying to apportion blame off of the former and onto the latter.

Overall, more people buy books than read them, more people read books then steal them. This has always been the case and probably always will be. Its human nature and the fact that authors are no longer able to profit off this should suggest something unnatural is going on.