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Comment by autosharp | Hacker News Reader

I will spend the money somewhere else and that is where they will be working in the future.

Without meaning to offend, that is not a good argument. If you rob a store and the employees have to quit their job, saying "I will spend the money somewhere else and that is where they will be working in the future" would not absolve you of the responsibility that you have indirectly damaged their livelihood.

The money/goods that I rob from a store cost a lot to reproduce, unlike movies. And I would scare people.

This is more like me buying from store A than from store B. Am I robbing store B?

Surely not giving to charity is worse than any other economic reallocation?

If store B is actually the black market then you actually did steal from the one producing whatever you bought or possibly from store A.

What do you mean by your first sentence? I am fairly sure that movies do actually cost quite a lot to produce.

On your second point I mean that there is zero marginal cost to produce a movie. To me, that makes that it cannot be compared to stealing e.g. a bag of M&M's.

I would bet that the marginal cost of that movie is actually higher than the cents it costs to produce that bag of M&M's. Even if the marginal cost of movies is 0 the cost of a bag of M&M is so low it might as well be 0. Does that now justify stealing the bag of M&M? No.

That does not even matter since looking at marginal cost of a movie makes no sense. Do you want to see movies? If yes then pay for them, if no then simply don't watch them. Justifying stealing isn't the way to go.

How fast would you be able to switch the industry you are working in?

I would guess that a lot of the jobs that are discussed in this thread are fairly specialised ones and if that industry would disappear they would be out of work.

The economic re-allocation doesn't have to be overnight or even in a single decade. It isn't as if the revenue suddenly goes to zero and the industry is nuked.

No matter how long it will take they will have to start fresh and whatever experience, knowledge and education they had becomes useless. Much more likely they simply become unemployed and stay that way.

That is an awful lot of time wasted of their lives.

It doesn't. Some people retire, some people leave the industry because they prefer something else, etc. All that needs to happen is that not all of them are being replaced.

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