I'm guessing somebody *looks up* just had a bad experiance with pirates.
A) you don't pay just the cost of replacement, you lose what you could have sold your cargo for. I.E. You buy 4000 units of Metal at place A for 1,000,000 credits. You can sell these units of Metal at place B for 6,000,000 credits. You don't lose 1,000,000 you lose 6,000,000.
b) If your ship blows up you die. Game over, sorry, no restarts. RP that and then I'll respect a call for lower pirating demands.
C) Pirating is in no way shape or form a "fast track to their very own BS". If I pirated EVERY trader I saw for 2,000,000 credits and they all paid (never gonna happen) it would take me about 1000 pirating interactions to get a fully outfitted BS. Say I met 10 traders per day who paid, that would still be 100 days of pirating, and that's STILL not including all I have to pay for repairs/TrainCDs.
Edit: YAY!!! I'm a Sabre pilot!!! Sabres rock your socks off!!