And even if I was swimming in money, it's often easier to just download the shows I want and watch them on Plex/Jellyfin than trying to navigate the (often ad-riddled) interfaces of the various platforms and finding where the content I want is.
One example is Rick and Morty, it's made by Adult Swim, but they don't have a streaming service in Canada. It seems to be on Primevideo but under a different system than their regular content. The other way to watch it is to buy it from my cable provider (I don't have cable). So to watch a 20-minutes animated show I'd have to take a +40$ subscription.
Also, I don't quite know my feelings on this yet, but there is something real about some shows and movies being part of the milieu. Something doesn't sit quite right about repeatedly increasing the pricing via anti-consumer acquisitions on products that are contributing a substantial part of how the society collectively feels and thinks. It feels like you have to make more money to live in the same society.
And it is sort of similar in the sense that, copyright law is over aggressive, honestly, many speed limits are set too low, violation is pretty wide-spread, and within reason it seems basically fine.
It breaks down a bit at the edges though, because extreme violations of speed limits can result in harm and death, while copyright is just lost profits.
It’s not remotely the same amount of harm, but mass violations of copyright seem to be able to end series and potentially production companies. Netflix and Hulu appear to be making go/no-go decisions about a series after the first few days/weeks of viewership data.