No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.
“stealing” a digital copy of a movie, tv show or a game is like if the item you’re stealing from a store is infinitely copyable. Like the replicator from star trek…or that one episode of Sabrina the teenage witch with that box that can make a perfect copy of everything you put inside of it.
Of course I personally would never pirate anything, no matter how much streaming services increase their prices or how much they crack down on VPN usage to get around geo-restrictions, PIRACY IS BAD AND ONLY BAD PEOPLE DO IT.
I’ve never pirated anything in my whole life!
You’re thinking far too short-term in your economic analysis.
Imagine if everyone tomorrow just started pirating the works of the major video game and film studios. Will high quality movies simply stop being made?
Of course not. There are many ways to structure a film industry. Why are films made by big for-profit companies in the first place? Market conditions have simply allowed for that consolidation. But if we change those market conditions through targeted mass piracy, the current major studio model will disappear in favor of other organizational structures.
Why can’t films be made by collaborations of various worker co-ops? You could have an actor’s co-op, a videographers guild, an employee-owned animation studio, etc. And they could all come together to collaborate on projects for a share of the total profits. Or hell, there’s nothing preventing even a major film studio from being entirely employee-owned.
If everyone stopped buying things from the giants, then the film industry wouldn’t disappear; it would adjust. Companies would become smaller as the “evil megacorp” model became unprofitable. And more space would open up for more distributed production models and for employee-owned businesses.
Your vision and imagination are ultimately simply far too limited.