People commonly burnout and run themselves ragged trying to make ends meet. I know I did.

If that's the case, then it sounds like people aren't getting paid. At least not a living, stable wage, which was sort of the implication.

And this may at least be in a very small part be a good thing, because it incentivises creators to switch to direct from creator purchases, which we're both in agreement is preferable.

CEO wages and capitalism doesn’t seem to care.

It still does seem to hurt them though. Because if it didn't in some way hurt them, then they wouldn't give a fuck about piracy.

Sure, the CEOs and execs just pass off potential lost revenue to buying users, but they can only do that to an extent. At a certain point, people are gonna say "fuck it, I don't care to pay $80/month for music, I'll switch to something else".

At a bare minimum, piracy is an ever present threat to their business model, that if they push too hard with prices, everybody is gonna ditch them for piracy. Because at the end of the day nobody has a pathological need for any particular media. And if someone really likes a particular type of media, they'll find some other way to get it without getting price gouged.

That’s the way forward.

I think we're in full agreement of this section here. Fuck the current system.