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Comment by lostmymind66 | Hacker News Reader

"If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means."

I disagree. Music is cheaper and easier to buy than ever with things like iTunes and the various streaming services and music piracy is still rampant.

Bars have very slim margins and owners will most likely never pay for these these streams, regardless of price, if they can easily get away with it.

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Music piracy has dropped considerably.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/...

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/46891-streaming-is-killing-mus...

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3037003/just-10-pe...

Is music piracy really 'rampant'?

My sense is that cheap legal streaming services have won the day. The original itunes model of $1+ per song is gone.$10-$20 CD's are gone.

Yes cheapskates can still torrent music and maintain their own digital archives. But for ease of use you cannot be spotify and equivalents.

Spotify beats piracy.

The same needs to happen for TV, movies, and live sport. (for a while there Netflix made pirate bay obsolete for me)

In the disruption alot of old school middle-men are going to lose big. But overall there should be confident streams of revenue, even more than you can get with outdated 1990s cable TV pay-per-view systems.

Successful bars don’t have slim margins. Restaurants often have slim margins because of food waste, but bars have pretty good margins. There is very good profit on drinks: a 750 bottle of Tito’s vodka costs about $18 wholesale, provides 16 shots, at $5 per shot, that’s $80. Then discount 20% for spillage, that’s $64. Bartenders in the US make tips, so the hourly cost to the bar is pretty minimal, but in Europe, everything is more expensive, but the ratios remain similar because a $5 shot in Europe would be €8, with no tipping, but roughly 20% of that price would go to the additional labor costs.

A well managed bar that keeps comps and spillage under control can make a very good profit, especially on soccer nights. Restaurants have very different economics because there are costs for the kitchen and other food waste. Anyone who has ever been in the restaurant business knows that the real profit comes from selling the drinks, not the food.

liquor licenses can be exorbitantly expensive (I hear $300k+ upfront in SF), plus increased recurring costs to comply with regulations; I'm sure authorities understand that establishments which serve liquor are more profitable in a vacuum, so they are likely to try and take a larger cut.

Since nobody spills 20% of every bottle of alcohol, is that 20% figure attributed to spillage intended to account for stronger pours and such?

Yeah, "and such" is often bartenders giving out free drinks

> Successful bars don’t have slim margins

This just another way of saying that successful bars are successful.

A bar with high margins will have other bars opening up near by and attempt to steal customers by offering lower price drinks driving down margins.

There are huge differences in alcohol prices across Europe (and in wages, too). In the Balkans or Portugal the shot could cost 1-2 euros, and in Norway over 10 euros.

You realise you're arguing against fundamental economics right? The convenience of paid services is a product, literally all products have a value so if you price it right then people will pay for it. If you somehow were able to price discriminate perfectly then you could completely remove piracy.

"literally all products have a value so if you price it right then people will pay for it"

All products do have a value. However, you need to compete against easy and free with piracy...which is virtually impossible to win and unfair..especially if you aren't the person that created the product in the first place.

I'm arguing that the convenience is a product that can be sold. Piracy doesn't have that convenience so if you sold it at the right price you could beat piracy. It has evidently worked or media wouldn't have any sales.

I wouldn't really consider piracy easy, compared to Spotify, YouTube or (formerly) Netflix.

It is getting harder and harder to find what I want on Netflix though. And I am not going to pay 4 or 5 such subscriptions.

> If you somehow were able to price discriminate perfectly then you could completely remove piracy.

And almost remove the consumer surplus.

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