> any published work is likely to be taken and repurposed, for no royalties or credit
I would say that now, more than ever, this means you should be collecting and sharing what you create.
Not on large social media platforms either, on websites that you own and (ideally) host yourself.
Start a blog, host your own instance of Gitea, build a platform for your videos. Spread what you create and activity participate in the community but maintain ownership and an audit trail over what you've created.
People ripping off others works has always been a thing, of course it's much easier and pervasive now. It's still (IMO) beneficial to say "Look! I did this thing first!", with the added benefit of accruing the kind of "social capital" Aaron talked about.
While not an outright solution to the fact that they _are_ expensive, if you don't care about them being second hand or a little older you can score a pretty good deal on sites like eBay.
For instance, TM-T88V printers can do more but cost around 3x as much as the one I got, a TM-T88IV which is the older version. Not perfect, but beats the like $200 price tag brand new.