You've missed the "if you have to ignore it to succeed" part of my comment.

You'll do fine without robbing a bank or dumping chemical waste (neither of which are profitable in practice now, as well). Meanwhile society is littered with so many small instances of copyright infringement (memes, which usually are not fair use; fan art; etc.) that it's common practice for rightsholders to look the other way - but it shouldn't have to be common practice, it should just be policy.

Also copyright infringement does not physically harm people.

> You've missed the "if you have to ignore it to succeed" part of my comment.

Breaking the law makes a lot of terrible business models instantly profitable.

Imagine I have a uranium refinement company. It is a colossal capital investment and not many companies do it. Law forbids me to sell weapons grade uranium for random people, but it just happens those very people are the ones who are willing to pay a lot of money for it as long as I don’t ask too many questions.

> Also copyright infringement does not physically harm people.

Starving artists might disagree here.

How about slave labor? Definitely more profitable than paying employees. Is the law broken here, too?

Just look at the pyramids. Thanks to slave labour Egypt has now a reliable source of income from tourism. Let’s make it legal again.

LOL nice. The scary thing is it's hard to tell if this is sarcasm on HN these days. Some days reading this site, I think I've found someone who genuinely believes we should end all regulation because it's more profitable without.

It was sarcasm. I’m sure I’m not a sociopath.

You don't need slave labor to run a business.

Plenty of people have made that argument for a long time. They make it to this very day - "if we have to pay a living wage (or comply with safety regulations, or give benefits, or....) we'll go out of business!"

You can also run a business without being unethical

Considering that it is solely a function of how influential, powerful, how much part of the aristocratic circle you are, or have bought them off that determines whether you are thrown in jail or are celebrated; by definition is is a clear signal that the law is broken.

Just because you can't rob a bank or pollute a river does not mean that the law is applied equally at all levels and, e.g., the government/Fed is stopped robbing our banks through inflation and debt, or the corporations they are beholden to are punished ro polluting and poisoning our bodies and environments.

"the King, in his gracious majesty, has forbidden both rich and poor alike, from sleeping under bridges in the rain"

The average (successful) bank robber gets less than $5000 in exchange for a substantial risk of going to prison for 10-25 years. It does not actually pay if you think ahead enough to do the math.