Good thing criminals never use cash, otherwise you could call the world economy criminal.

So you are saying that HSBC getting caught helping launder cartel money at the teller is fake news?

USD Is still the preferred currency of criminals across the world and even more so they use assets like paintings to facilitate non traceable payment and smuggle extremely large dollar amounts. They also use art work to launder money.

I'd suggest you pull your head out of your ass and get on the crypto train because it's leaving you behind. Look at btc, ltc, dash and others.

To add. USD hasn't been backed by a real asset in nearly a century. It was once backed by gold but now the only thing backing it is full faith in the USA. At the moment that means something, it might not always.

You need to educate yourself on this stuff because you sound like a moron.

One nice thing about using parts scavenged from roadside signs is they're incredibly power efficient. If everything was pulling its full power, I think I'd be pulling 100W maximum, and they don't run like that.

I understand this position - I used to be of the "it's the internet, steal anything that isn't nailed down" mentality too.

And I still have a lot of that, to be fair. But COVID taught me a general lesson that I've been trying to take to heart: if you want nice things that cost money to function to keep existing, at some point people are going to need to chip in. My town lost a ton of good local businesses to the pandemic, and many others got dangerously close to closing. I don't go out and support every local business, but shit I care about (my local independent movie theatre, live music venues, etc.) gets the amount of money I'm willing to contribute.

If people don't do this, nice things either disappear or become less nice in an effort to secure funding by alternate means.

You're welcome not to - the means exist where you don't have to - but think about the declining quality of some of the stuff you enjoy and why that might be the case.

I will never pay for an online service ever

I disagree with this attitude, but you're for sure not alone. If everyone was like that, we just wouldn't have a lot of things we do now.

When our boys were young and torrents and ad blockers were new, I tried to get them to understand that, while not everything is about money, people generally don't invest huge amounts of their own time and money into things that they aren't getting paid for. If everyone started using ad blockers, sites would close down or move to a subscription model because ads are what paid for content. If everyone stole their music, some bands might just hang it up or put less focus on making new music, etc.

And here we are: lots of publications have moved behind paywalls because they weren't getting much ad revenue anymore, many have started putting out content that's just regurgitated crap from Twitter and Reddit because they can't afford journalists, and some have just gone under. Bands spend a lot more time touring because it's harder to steal a concert so they make more money doing that than putting out albums (though the Spotify model has changed some things). People are all about stealing content and thinking they should get everything for free, but it really is selfish and unrealistic.

I will sound immensely selfish

You do sound immensely selfish.

At least you have the self awareness that you are a selfish asshole, so that’s something I guess?