Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.
If you're fighting the system, then you're still caught in it. It's not about fighting the system; it's about ceasing to hold it together. Non-cooperation. We cannot be imprisoned without our cooperation. Their power is in our acquiescence.