[1] https://www.marketingcharts.com/demographics-and-audiences-1...
I hope your indigent pirate going to compensate the authors once he has lifted himself out of poverty.
Huh? I agree with everything up to this point. Of the G20 nations, only the US has all the problems you complain about: no disposable income, enormous medical costs, no job protections, etc. Well-run developed nations don't have these problems.
As someone who left the US, the only real problem over here is that English-language books are hard to find in countries where English isn't widely spoken (which should be obvious of course), so of course e-books are very attractive for this reason. But then, as you can see in many comments here, the e-book sellers don't work much with people living outside the US, your "purchased" e-books stop working outside the US, etc.
Let's return to the central point: transactions ought to be consensual, and pirating ain't.
Yes, those transaction costs are way above the worth of the item if its already below the selling price for person A.
Note that in practice, almost all transaction costs are not money.
The key to the problem is political action.
Normally "have to" is used when the consequences of not doing so are very dire, possibly life threatening. A person shoplifting a copy of Harry Potter for their own use would not normally count.
Many would contend the consequences would be very dire if they didn't act. For example, those who depend on Sci-Hub for educational material. They'd contend they've no other option.