Other people here have offered counterexamples, where people are getting paid for creating Free Software. Aside from those employed by goliaths like IBM, there's a consumer's co-op I personally spoke with, and there's also philanthropy like OSAF and Ubuntu. (OSAF employs a very close friend of mine.) <http://tech.coop/About%20Us>
Further, people in the Free Culture movement, like prof Larry Lessig, concern themselves with alternative forms of compensation. As a simple google search reveals: <http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Alessig.org+compensation&btnG=Google+Search>
He meets your (as well as the media industry's) objections head on:
"In finding that balance, Congress kept separate two questions the labels want you to confuse. One question was whether broadcasters should be paid for their content. Answer: Yes. The second question was whether broadcasters should have the power to control innovation in cable TV by deciding whether cable could run broadcasters' content. Answer: Absolutely not. [...] Artists should be paid for their art. But there are many ways to ensure this, and not all of them give labels a veto over innovation." <http://www.lessig.org/content/standard/0,1902,23401,00.html>
> No. I gave three examples - the production and distribution of
> peaches, health care, and transportation. By the first, I meant the
> entire primary sector (food, raw materials); by the second and third,
> I meant the secondary and tertiary sectors (vehicles, simple and
> complex services, etc.). That's not the "nation-state" - it's most of
> what we live on.
If you want examples of anarchist principles straight from the management literature and outside the tech/culture industries, then Ricardo Semler's _Maverick_ is one. Where he claims, "We're thrilled our workers are self-governing and self-managing," and even touches upon the more theoretical roots of his corporation. (He clearly seems to be at least somewhat acquainted with Bakunin and socialist theory, as he mentions them in passing.)
Other examples I've heard about are the GE/Durham plant and WL Gore. (Can't personally verify, though, as I'm not very familiar with them.) <http://www.fastcompany.com/online/28/ge.html> <http://www.fastcompany.com/online/28/teamwork.html>
Of course, these aren't "pure" examples; they're hybrid organizations acting within a mixed economy framework. So I suppose we could raise the bar and not accept them, because they're not platonically perfect and self-contained anarchist systems or something. But there are people who theorize about numbers and infinitely thin, straight lines, without actually having encountered them. When you're musing and theorizing about stuff, you pick out aspects you want to focus on, and see if they maybe apply more generally.
No one truly knows whether a large-scale anarchist society is possible; that's why some people collect case studies and think hard about how far things can go. Experimentation is always needed.
Tayssir