Books might have once been seen as luxuries, and the idea of a lending library allowed those in poverty to get a taste of wealth, so to speak... but they get dumped into landfills by the truckload today and can be had for pennies (or fractions of pennies, actually).

Well those ones might be, but the ones I want sure aren't. I have to moderate my book-purchasing to avoid over-spending. The library is pretty helpful (reservation fees are more than I'd like, but a lot less than buying); some years I draw a couple of hundred books. But a lot of them I end up buying. Got one in my hand that was just delivered minutes ago (the new partial biography of Jobs about his years outside Apple).

I guess where this train of thought is going is to point out that people like me do exist. I do spent a lot on books. I borrow a lot from the library. Your assertions come across very strongly suggesting that people like me are a rounding error. But I assure you, when I'm in the bookstore I'm definitely not the only person there. Between us we appear to be propping up entire publishing industries. Almost 80% of the sales are physical rather than digital (1); if we weren't here there would be nothing for you to pirate!

[1] According to https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/books-ma... "Print remains dominant, accounting for 78% of consumer market revenue"