All good points illustrating the reality of the artistic game and business as it has existed pretty much since the dawn of man.
My personal experience with this is more in the writing area and the real issue in my head, is not so much the studio system, (which is in itself a very viable and highly productive concept, that can be compared to a movie production, where the master artist is the director/producer and the apprentices are the gears in the network doing the work) but with incompetent and/or lazy people with money bluntly taking credit for what they dont really deserve.
For this, I think a clear differentiation between ie apprenticeship/freelancing and ghost-artistry is in order, although I guess the borderlines are pretty fluid. This is were the ethics question comes into play, as I had mentioned earlier.
Take the following example:
John Doe has the idea to “Planet Wars” and passes it on to you to write the script. So you spent months fleshing out the story, beautifully and skillfully illustrating here and there, putting eloquent dialogues into characters interactions etc and finally, with the x-th draft, the thing is approved and moves on into production .The credits in this example go as follows: Story: John Doe Screenplay: “Your name here” All is well and fair here, now imagine this:
Same example as above, but now J. Doe has you sign an NDA, forbidding you to mention the work you do anywhere in space and time and to anybody, and adorns himself with the writing credits and possibly even leaves you behind coughing in the dusty wake of his success and victory parade.
Now given the prerequisite that you are passed on to other jobs, you could work a lifetime this way producing excellent quality and never be able to build up a decent portfolio or professional industry reputation, having absolutely nothing, but a few unfinished scripts, sketches, sculpts…whatever… to show for on a public basis!!!
This is, in my opinion, where we have clearly moved into territory that is just plainly unethical and from an artistic perspective just terribly wrong.
I mean, here comes ie Angelica Jolly and “writes” her Autobiography.
Now everbody goes: “Great! What a talented person, so funny and well-versed… yada yada yada…”, when indeed she had just been recording some very crude, perhaps vulgar and boring tell-tales into a technical gadget and handed the thing over to a hired “ghost” to make it into an entertaining product.
I guess you could say, “All is fair in love and war and business is war!”, but from a perspective of honest artistry, I sure dont agree. I think no matter how small the contribution that made it into a final piece of art, the artist deserves credit and mention at least somewhere for making the “cut-of-excellence”. In the Jolly case above, that might/should look something like this: “My Life between violent intercourse with Billy Rob and some Lesbian Adventures” by A. Jolly as told to “Your name here”.
“Ghosting” art of any craft and getting paid for it, is on the other hand, still far better than having it bluntly stolen from you, which believe me, happens a lot and perhaps even way more often than ghosting. (For those interested, there is actually a “ghostly” profession, such as what I will term here “idea scouts”. These people make their money by sitting around in cafe’s and/or other places artists tend to frequent (to spend some leisure time and discuss their ideas), grabbing whatever ideas and concepts they can grasp and sell that. That is how far the industry has drifted to satisfy the mainstream’s ever growing, insatiable consumption of the goods they/we produce.)
I am well aware that the biz doesnt work in a right or fair way, but hey, this is a philosopical issue and as artists of any and all crafts, aren’t we all philosophers one way or another?
I loved your input so far, so lets get some more of that! 
