Assuming that by piracy you mean "shared for free" and not taking over of oil tankers off the coast of Somalia, I'd be laughing all the way to the bank because...

a) a book downloaded million times even before it's out would also be sold in millions of copies because it is clearly a most wanted book;
b) all those prizes for literature I'd rake in - again, cause it is such a fantastic book;
c) future contracts for my other books based on being "one of the most sought after and most read authors of our time";
d) FUCK YOU SHAKESPEARE!
e) movie rights;
f) merch;
g) "More people read this book than the Bible - find out why" sells;

Also, every single book by Stephen King is out there in a scanned and OCR-ed form, yet people still keep buying his books, old and new, while publishers keep paying him millions of dollars on a promise of writing a new book.
And last I checked Metallica still keeps on making and selling albums despite Napster forcing them to sell both their kidneys, lungs, livers, testicles and feet to pay for piratizing costs they had to face.

It's free publicity.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

Nobody pays for votes with money. Not directly at least.

People are paid in deals, jobs, favors - which they get to enjoy AFTER they elect candidate X.
Supply contracts, appointments, sponsorships, various consulting positions... once elected X gets handed a whole ball of strings that can be pulled for people who've been good to X.

Your boss doesn't have to order you to vote for candidate X. Nor does candidate X have to bribe you to get your vote.
Your boss just needs to mention that he/she hopes candidate X will win cause that will mean a secure government contract for the company.
They are friends from back in your boss's goat fucking days, and you know how goat fuckers "stay tight".

And for a "small-ish municipality (between 10,000 to 15,000 in population)" one would probably only need to acquire a couple of hundred votes, one way or the other.

10000-15000 is about 7500-11250 eligible voters.
At about 60% turnout, that makes 4500-6750 votes, total.
At very worst, with a single opponent, you'd need 2250-3375 votes + 1 (or whatever is the necessary majority).

I.e. Not even a quarter of the population.
Now... how many of those people or their spouses and family (Remember, married people count as two votes each.) are already on the municipality payroll, one way or the other?
Police, fire department, utilities...
Those are the votes you buy directly from the budget.
You only need a couple of percent of "real" voters out of those 2250-3375.
I.e. People with influence over other voters.

And yes... The incumbent official has it much easier.

That's called being obsessive compulsive and it is a mental disorder.

Study proves just the opposite.

I.e. That anyone can do it. He just does it better and with less effort. After training his whole life.
Ergo... not much brain power needed if average Joe can do it too. But to do it at expert level - you must train your whole life.

That "Some people are born with the ability to simply "do it"" part.

If there was any truth in that, there'd be a certain statistical probability for occurrence of such "Ubermensch" who are "born with the ability to simply "do it"".
So... let's say that it's something as rare as an IQ of 150. That's 1 person in 2330.
Or, about 3024000 people on the planet today.

Who could "simply do it". Whatever the "it" may be. Cause they have instant access to "the zone, or flow".
There'd be 3 million of 'Jack of all trades" experts IN EVERYTHING roaming around, looking like a Hitler's wet dream, cause they'd have perfect physique as they would be getting maximum levels of exercise from simply sitting on their ass and watching porn all day.
3 million people who could outplay a concert pianist who trained his/her whole life, after an afternoon with an instrument they never played before.
3 million people who could pass any test in record time cause all tests are designed with ordinary humans in mind. They'd be wiping their asses with diplomas.
Unless they'd prefer to wipe their asses with Fortune 500 stock cause they'd be cracking that whole economy thing wide open.

Cause they were "born with the ability to simply "do it"".

Exactly. He's been pushing one single button for most of his life.
He got really good at pushing that button. He can push it in his sleep.

LOL! No.
Unless you regularly faint whenever you encounter a problem as mentally challenging as deciding if the traffic light is red or green.
Ever played chess and fainted? If not... you're probably safe from "stadium induced fainting".

The article is just click-whoring for the last bits of interest in that recent ball kicking event.
Which was once again won by Germans as I hear.

A chicken can do half of that task with its head chopped off.

Had it been taught to kick a ball while running around, it could probably do that as well.
Insert joke about it still being better than the players of team XY.

Done by people who either never had to go without electricity for more than 24 hours due to environmental conditions.
OR WORSE - people who went through something like that without learning anything.

Every single thing made by man has multiple fail-safes built in, which have been either designed from the start OR have been evolved into the object through generations of use.
Only it is so obvious to us that those parts should be there, we don't even see them now.

A simple thing like a container for carrying water with you, only couple of decade ago didn't have a built in system which prevents accidental opening and spilling of the contents.
A screw-on cap.
Not so long ago we used cork plugs. And breakable bottles.
Evolution and additional fail-safes.

We've been building civilizations about as long as we've been making knives or bottles.
There are fail-safes upon fail-safes built in.
From education which creates people who know how to fix and make and work things, to society control and guide systems like morality, various allegiances and duties, laws... even religion.
And that's not taking in account simple things like building infrastructure with backups, shielding and hardening - particularly the things that are build to function 24/7, 366 days a year, for at least 40-50 years.

Humans build things that WORK.
Because that is their primary function we build them for. Followed closely by "it needs to keep on working".
Built-in obsolescence had to be invented so we'd keep on spending money.
So we'd have an economy that "keeps on working" once we got it to work.

You don't need much brain for running around kicking a ball.

Marketing usually is.

On the other hand... People love their singing boxes.
And you got to admit - it got you talking about it.

Just like the talking packaging of the future will talk to you. Hey! People love when Siri does it!
Just think of the joy of THAT from every shelve.

And of people greeting their detergents and talking to them on their way to register.

Although... they may express FOR you.
Like that box of condoms humming "Get Lucky" in your pocket all the time during your ride home.

Think milk cartons. That sing joyful tunes and jingles when you open your fridge.

Packaging that remembers you - wherever you are.
Which will give you your very own personal discount cause it knows that your milk carton at home is only just opened, but it knows from your profile that you like a bargain.

Products will express you when you buy them, and sadness when you don't.
They will be your friends. They will know your favorite things.
They will love you like you were never loved by anyone else.
Your dog will be jealous. Your cat will try to kill them.

Actually, that sounds EXACTLY like an internet tough guy, hiding behind perceived immunity of the internet, throwing threats and insults.

To which one should respond in kind and/or worse, ignore them, report them to the admins/authority, post a video of themselves shooting at a target or post an address of one's lawyer.
Sure... all those responses require some action and further responsibility for those actions, but so does any other way or form of protecting one's existence or rights.

I mean... Police can't be watching only one person all the time, checking if someone has made any threats or tried to hurt them.
It's very hard to do that for people who are heads of states.
SOME action (and responsibility for those actions) on one's part IS required.

Actually, there's nothing wrong with that idea.
I've known 17-year-old "children" who were more "adult" than some 40-50-year-old adults I knew at the time.

And we DO practice it.
Only, it's mostly archaic, traditional and uni-directional OR it is a matter arising from legal dispute.
Instead of being something like a social and legal contract that you can both accept and sign and be treated by the society as an adult.
And have those rights taken away or suspended without going through something like being sent to jail.

I'm guessing that the problem is that we'd need some kind of a test... and it's no longer enough just to be able to kill a buffalo or read from a book.
So... we just keep assuming that eventually all people simply become adults on their 18th birthday or whenever.