I wouldn't mind paying retail price for all the anime and manga I consume, if I could get everything that I wanted with high quality downloads and high quality translations, that has the money actually go to the creators and not a middleman. The issue is that if you find a legal avenue to purchase what you want, it's oftentimes not high quality at all, and usually some kind of streaming shit with built in DRM, and the translations either are awful on purpose, or are nonexistent. I do not want to buy a BD or physical manga copy that is Japanese only. I do not want to pay Crunchyroll for low quality streams so they can pocket the money to make awful propaganda cartoons. I do not want to have to hunt around a bunch of different distributors to find one series. And I most certainly do not want to find out that the older series I am interested in doesn't have any legal means to purchase a translated copy, but is still purged from the internet for being "pirated". Anime and manga is increasingly having the worst of both worlds where piracy is cracked down on with glee, but there isn't a reasonable legal option to purchase either. That's all without getting into the increasing Western corporate and government censorship, that is actively trying to stifle the handful of legal avenues of purchase that exist for English speakers.
Also, on a personal note, piracy is the only reason I am into anime and manga; I was a poorfag growing up with an old, hand-me-down laptop, and if it wasn't for piracy sites, then there is a good chance that I would not have turned into a lifelong weeb. I highly doubt I am unique in that way. Piracy has always been free advertising for Japan's main cultural exports, so I think it is really stupid of the companies to crack down on it without first getting a proper distribution network set up for legal purchases to at least give people the chance to purchase legally, with some confidence that the creators are being compensated for their creations.
It seems like everything is becoming more and more fake and gay as time goes on.