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Comment by xevb3k | Hacker News Reader

When I grew up, we never ate at a restaurant... just would have been an extravagant expense. My parents probably earned <15000USD combined. This book would have been far too expensive to consider.

This is in the western world... imagine how many people in the world can’t afford this book. On a global scale... very few people could afford this book (or a 40USD video game).

It makes me kind of sad that you’d so casually suggest that this is not the case. Makes me think that perhaps people in the tech world don’t have a great understanding of how poor many people are...

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there is an extraordinary amount of freely available content online for people who want to learn, improve themselves, and to make more money.

To those who cannot afford it, here’s 2.5 years of my side work for free http://billsix.github.io/bug

Of course there is. But that’s neither what you said, nor the topic being discussed.

What you said is more than a select few could afford a $40 book.

The topic being discussed is, the morality of charging so much/piracy.

Good work plugging your github though!

More than a select few can afford this book

Over 80% of the world population lives on less than $10/day. The percentage of the world population who can afford this book is very small.

Maybe 10%, 5%? Other than repeating this obviously wrong statement, would you like to provide some evidence that >20% of the world population can afford this book?

I said that more than a select few can afford the book. I did not say that it is affordable globally.

Pirate away dude. The piracy of JSTOR repos didn’t help the global poor population, nor will piracy of this book.

Your definition of “many” is <5% of people, got it.

The worlds population living on $10/day, will have no use for a book on a niche aspect of type systems. The majority of people on that wage will probably not even access to a computer.

What is the purpose of this comment?

Most people, at any income level, would not find value in this book. The fraction of people who find value in the book maybe correlated with income.

There are a large number of people who might benefit from access to this book (or similar books) would can not afford to legitimately purchase it.

Given that only a small fraction of the world population can afford this book (I estimated 5%, happy entertain other estimates) it seems likely that the majority of people that could benefit from access to this book, could not afford to buy it.

I find that unfortunate.

An obvious counterexample is students.

They can request that their library pick up a copy. Or get an inter-library loan.

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