A well made font, from an artistic perspective, is a thing of beauty-- particularly when it incorporates subtle visual themes and nuances. It's definitely more than just "drawing the alphabet". There are also metric ass-tons of glyphs necessary to make a usable font.
Likewise, a properly hinted digital font file, especially with little touches like ligatures, is also a thing of utilitarian beauty. It's a ton of work to get that right.
That the shapes of fonts can't be protected by copyright isn't a new idea. Anybody who makes a font today should know that going in. I wouldn't make a font with the expectation of getting paid outside of doing it for a specific commission. Doing it "for the love" and expecting to get paid seems like a losing business proposition.