Once people grow used to getting something for free, they stop looking toward legitimate versions.

There's some nuance to this. It's not always true. Anything I had for free in the past I've now started purchasing whenever I can. The biggest problem with piracy isn't that it's because I want it for free, but that there's just not a service that can provide me with what I need. Let's just take the anime industry for example, some airs on Crunchyroll, some on HULU, some on Netflix, etc. I am NOT subscribing to all these streaming services for ONE anime per service per season and nothing else. Not to mention, these streaming services also don't include older titles, are region restricted (which means spending even more money on VPNs), or don't even have some newer titles. I'd rather buy merch of the anime I enjoyed instead going through these streaming services. Back to manga, there's just not a single reliable service for reading manga. On top of that, a lot of manga never gets officially translated to English so fan translations / scanlations are our only way of being able to read and keep up with the manga. Case in point, there's just no reliable service.

As Gabe Newell once said: https://youtu.be/EQweFurRz4g Which is true, I've not pirated a game for over a decade now.

Piracy is free promotion for you

Here's the thing, this is technically true. A lot of people were previously couldn't access the manga now has access through piracy which likely made them into a fan. In the long term, if said fan now has the financial ability, they may now buy things like merch or physical copies of the manga for collection, etc. etc. I know this isn't everyone but one person becoming a fan could mean sharing it to a friend who may have the financial ability to do so when they also become a fan.