However, such wishful thinking has no place in my worldview. Either a sale happened or it did not and it never was. Again, you can't lose something you never had, and calling it a loss is just wordplay. Doubly so when it's only a loss if such and such had been so and so and yada yada. It never was. If you lost something, you go find it or call your bank and have them explain how the account now has less money than yesterday.

And yes, thanks to piracy, you might make fewer sales. I don't have a problem with that. I also don't have a problem with pepsi resulting in coca cola having fewer sales.

Well, you can. We have entire legal systems dedicated to assessing economic harm based on similar hypothetical situations. For e.g. Loss of income due to injury.. loss of earnings due to defamation.. diminished earning capacity due to a handicap, etc, etc. You can't simply say - "it never was or you never had that money". All these things have well established economic and legal histories. I don't know if those are part of your worldview. If you wish to reject them, then be assured that you are well outside of mainstream economic and legal thought.

A loss is simply a reduction. I hope you realize that a positive claim that piracy results in zero loss of revenue, has to be substantiated. At best, you can claim "we don't know" and you might very well be right - we simply don't know exactly what would have happened. But that is not the same as saying - we know nothing. We can piece together a model based on basic economic principles of market value, supply and demand, opportunity cost, etc, etc. and come up with a reasonable analysis.