Unironically, really. Piracy is the sole reason the games industry is even minorly reasonable and so widely accessible. Studies suggest it causatively increases sales. If it wasn’t for piracy, I’m convinced I would’ve been completely priced out the market and just never got into games on any meaningful level.
Why should that philosophy not be extended to all things?
Yeah, the piracy case really drives this home. Piracy of media (especially movies, music, and TV shows) absolutely plummeted during the golden age of streaming: it turns out that most people are willing to pay a little bit to access media on demand as long as that access is consistent, convenient, and relatively cheap. As soon as streaming started hard down the road to enshittification by jacking up prices and fragmenting into a million different services, piracy started to heat back up again. You’d think media companies would learn a lesson here, but apparently not.
someone stole your personal property? that’s bad
someone stole your private property you were using to extract rents and surplus value? oh no, you might have to sell your labor
In a capitalist world, a thief is probably the most hardworking person and a risk taking entrepreneur/disruptor
Hilariously, there is an extensive body of microeconomics work on just this topic.
