Well, my friend, he’s kinda poor he can’t afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates. He pirate books, audiobook and videos and other stuff. Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author (yeah, I don’t understand it either), he likes to read physical books, but yeah, if he hates the author or just wants to skim through it, he will download the book.
He usually doesn’t like to pirate from small companies or professors who are trying to make a living by selling books, but from millionaires & plenty of mega corps which already have loads of money, he feels like it’s the right move to pirate
Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn’t pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.
He says he will buy stuff when his time is more valuable than money, let’s all hope that day is soon.
What are your piracy habits?
No, I don’t, because I can afford stuff and pirating in this situation would be just pure stealing which I believe is morally wrong. Yes, being a billionaire is usually morally wrong too but I don’t think it just cancels out.
Justifying piracy by saying capitalism is bad sounds like a hypocrisy to me. You want to use something that exists thanks to capitalism without participating in it. You want to eat your cake and have it too.
Now, the case is different for people that can’t afford stuff, especially when they genuinely need it (but I don’t draw the line at entertainment, after all people NEED entertainment too). In that case, please pirate away. Everyone deserves a decent life. In general, I largely agree with OP’s friend.
These things don’t exist because of capitalism. They exist in capitalism. They were created by people with talent, skill and artistic vision, and the passion to pull it off. They would be creating in any system. All capitalism did was add people above the creators to own their work and siphon the majority of profit.
That might be true in many cases but do you actually believe that things requiring immense investments and years of work like AAA games and high budget blockbuster movies would be created in any system?
Of course they could. Why not? You’re still thinking in terms of capitalism, which is the problem. Only in a capitalist system do these things require large amounts of investment.
Films are created by teams of people. Under capitalism, they need to be paid, and handsomely, because they need money to survive. What about a system that already provides basic needs? One that directly invests in its community? One that doesn’t even need money, because it becomes redundant once goods are provided freely?
In such a system, people work on what they want, when they want, and provide for society because it’s their true desire. Such a system not only would still create art, it would create vastly more art, because literally anyone could make it.
I find it kinda hard to believe that people would be able to achieve the level of organization and would be willing to put in the effort required just by doing what they want when they want, without any outside incentive. I’m not talking about a painting or a book, that’s why I specifically mentioned things requiring large investments. And by investment I didn’t mean just money but time and effort in general.
Why?
I just don’t think the majority of people are motivated enough. I have met many people who have no hobbies and no ambitions and just don’t want to do anything productive. They would like to spend their entire lives playing video games or partying or something similar.
And this is just about the lack of motivation, but what about malicious actors? People who would sabotage other’s efforts or try to profit in an unfair way? How would you ensure this won’t happen?
What about shitty and unpleasant but necessary jobs no one wants to do?
The idea that once you remove the money everyone will suddenly feel the desire to serve the society is bonkers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love capitalism. I want to believe the world like that is possible, I really do, but I just can’t see it working. I live in a society where I have to use a 3 kg bike lock in order not to lose my bike and even then I have to detach the $10 light and take it with me because otherwise it won’t be there when I come back. I have zero trust and belief that such society can magically self organize and work together towards a common happiness.
Call this cope if you want, but I think that’s largely down to their material conditions. For most people, options really aren’t that great for truly succeeding, or even living a decent life. Not that this makes their decision logical, but it does make it understandable. A society that sees to their basic needs and has completely open career opportunities presents so much more choice. Imagine the difference in mentality it would engender if you never grew up needing to worry about your next meal. If you never saw any indication that your parents were struggling, or anyone else’s. If everyone seemed to be doing what they wanted in their lives. You would grow up with a mentality that you could learn anything you wanted, and the knowledge that you could actually do it, and society would support you in your ambition. And, even if you had no genuine long-term ambition or hobbies - people just get bored. Imagine if, when you got bored, you had the option to help run a coffee shop, or to help someone harvest their farm, without needing to take it on as a full-time job, but just for something to do that afternoon?
Compare that to how people are socialised today - the vast majority of people will grow up in a family that is divided in some way or other, and in the majority of cases, financial reasons can be easily discerned. One of the partners perhaps isn’t contributing to the finances, or is spending frivolously. One perhaps won’t get a job even though a single income is not covering expenses. Or both are working and even that isn’t enough, leading to extremes of stress. Or maybe one has a much better paying job than the other, leading to resentment due to dependence. Growing up with such a family would show a child that working is a world of stress, and that money controls everything. These formative years can entirely shape a person’s worldview for life. And entering the competitive world of schooling, then later entering the working world itself, will only confirm those feelings, because everything in our lives is constant competition, constant grind and pressure to always be trying to get the most value out of everything. That can just wear a person down to the point that doing anything seems like too much effort and too much time, when so little time is available.
No one can ever ensure people won’t act maliciously. Even in the perhaps utopian world I described, people can still simply be rotten, or be made rotten in some way due to other rotten people. What we can do is, between us, try to create the type of world thus described. The truly malevolent may not be stamped out, but they can be vastly reduced (in the cases where they were made to be so because of society failing them), and the people who were driven to desperation due to need (the vast majority of what we could call ‘crime’) would no longer exist as a category.
That is a loaded question. There truly is no job that “no one wants to do”. For one thing, volunteer work, open source projects, and internet moderation proves that people will work for free. And people who, even under capitalism, perform demanding, demeaning, disgusting and thankless jobs who nonetheless sincerely love their jobs (though usually not the conditions or the pay), proves that people can find joy in any kind of work.
Why do you say that? People worked and had functioning societies loooong before money was invented. Before property was invented. There’s evidence for thriving, culturally advanced, diverse, egalitarian societies throughout prehistory, with no state or hierarchy. The Indus Valley civilisation is one example. Attempts to create such egalitarian societies in the modern era have failed not because it isn’t possible, but because outside forces - most often the US, particularly the CIA - have either fully invaded or sabotaged the project covertly. Revolutionary Catalonia would have thrived if it weren’t for Franco’s Fascist Spain. The Communards managed to establish working class rule in Paris until they were crushed by the French Army. Chile elected a socialist, Allende, and the CIA wasted absolutely no time invading to coup his ass and install a dictator. Check other South American countries for similar stories.
It doesn’t fail because it doesn’t work. It is sabotaged. Every single time.
I want you to consider this this worldview only exists because of the society we exist in.
Consider this: how much of a concern would that be if bikes were free?
Please afford me the common respect of not assuming I believe in magic, or, that I metaphorically believe this would happen as if by magic, easily, instantly, with zero effort involved. I have no illusions that this could happen without a complete revolution of society, with the working class revolting completely of their own accord, in unison and common effort, toward the goal of rebuilding society with themselves in control, and dethroning the elite, demolishing their structures and ravaging all they have built.
It will not be easy. It will not be pretty. There will be terror. There will perhaps be beheadings of billionaires in town squares. There may be invasions of mansions to burn them down and kidnap their occupants.
And there also may not be. Revolutions have happened that could be descibed in such a way. They also have happened more peacefully - with violence, of course, but not terror. Military tactics and organised citizenry simply demanding their rights en masse, with only the threat of their numbers being necessary. But more often, there is a mixture of such things.
So no, it will not happen magically. Even as metaphor, that is not what I imagine. Unless you consider the human spirit wishing for its true freedom to be a form of magic, and the co-operation of people truly wishing each other the best to be magic also, then in case, maybe so. But we have evidence enough that these things exist. And magic is only deserved as a description of things fantastical with no precedent or reasonable basis.
probably because their energy is robbed by the constant, literally unending lifelong need to spend 40+ hours a week making someone else rich by sweating their asses off, just to pay off some landlord’s mortgage for a place to stay while they’re not at work and keep themselves fed.
Absolutely.
Give me 5 years without worrying about the money, and I’ll build a game bigger and fancier than any AAA title (assuming someone else will do the art and story)
I’d build worlds just because I like to feel godlike - I’d write the rules to generate world after world just because that’s what I am, and without worrying about finances I’d hand it off to others to do what they love with it. Other people love writing engines or handcrafting experiences - I love building the tools
I think you’re looking at it the wrong way – AAA stuff isn’t good because of a profit motive, it’s this bad because everyone is trying to minimize the work put in and maximize the profits. If everyone working on games collaborated on a few engines and shared work freely between each other, we’d have way better games
Stealing suggests they don’t have the content anymore; they do. “Copying” is the word you’re looking for.
The whole “stealing” comparison rather breaks down when there is basically no scarcity / no cost to duplicating and distributing what has been produced
Even arguing it’s “stealing” because it deprives the publisher of the cost isn’t exactly true, because it only holds if you’d actually have ponied up were the content not available for free (I know for sure I definitely wouldn’t have played some games or watched some shows if I had had to actually pay for them)
Artistic content is, believe it or not, produced outside of capitalism as well. And in capitalist societies it often is produced despite capitalism, not thanks to it, and one could argue capitalism itself is a large part of the reason that content’s quality has taken a dive over the past decades
I definitely mean “stealing” as “depriving the publisher of the cost”. Limiting the term “stealing” just to moving physical objects really makes no sense in the current world.
That’s an interesting case I never really considered. If you only genuinely pirate stuff you would never buy otherwise then… I guess it’s fine? But this alone doesn’t put the end to the discussion because I find it really hard to believe that people would just give up all of the stuff they pirate if they had to pay for it. But in some cases, sure, sounds reasonable.
That’s true of course but I don’t think just pretending we don’t live in a capitalist world and taking stuff for free is making this world better in any way.
Let’s say something costs $20, from which 75% goes to make some rich guy even richer and only 25% goes to the actual author who put in the work. It’s more important to me to give that $5 to the author than NOT to give the $15 to the rich guy. Would I prefer there wasn’t a rich guy in the equation? Yes, of course, but that’s often just not possible.
In the end, I genuinely want the world to be a better place but I don’t really believe in extreme solutions. I appreciate your civilized answer despite different opinions. Peace!
This reminds me of issues with Groupon, LivingSocial, and other kinds of online middle men for businesses selling discounted goods and services. When a business signs up with Groupon to promote themselves by offering these discounts, it sometimes leads to the business being overwhelmed with customers if they sell too many deals, primarily if the business provides one on one services. So, if a massage salon oversells their deal, they might have only a couple of masseuses booking thousands of massages - they might never be able to fulfill their obligations and might even go out of business because they can’t book full price clients.
But if the business is one to many - say, a yoga class, a gym membership, a foreign language class - they usually can squeeze more bodies into the rooms and make it work.
And if the business is scalable - an online yoga class, an online language class, something you can download - you could.probably sell an infinite amount of deals and be just fine. The infinitely available deals probably won’t crowd out the full price clients because they are likely not looking for deals in Groupon, etc. And you will garner future continuing / full price clients because the deal allowed you to sample their product/service.
ETA: I have hundreds of free downloads of books from Amazon, offered as promotions to introduce me to different authors/series. If I share these free downloads, is it piracy?
I also can afford stuff but sometimes stuff doesn’t allow itself to be bought. Tried buying some music in mp3 format from Amazon, they wouldn’t sell me digital music because I didn’t live in one of the handful of countries they sell to. So I just ordered the audio CD and ripped it. Now I have the physical disk as well which, I’m not going to lie, I like, but convenience went out the window. This was a new release.
On a different occasion (older release), I couldn’t find the audio CD version but found a site that sold to me (not Amazon, but what do you know, it is possible to sell digital goods all over the world. Whoddathunkit?).
And then I have some music I still cannot find neither digital nor disk except for some very rare vinyls which pop up once in a while. And I don’t have a set-up to rip vinyls, so what does one do about that? Piracy is also a service problem.
Yeah, I didn’t mention this but if it’s just impossible to buy something then I don’t see anything wrong about piracy. No one looses anything.