I don’t know anything about the origin of the new use of ‘cap’. No one was saying ‘based’ in proto-internet culture before Lil B’s music videos around 2010-2011. This guy blew up quick and he used the word in his nickname. It was his version of BRRRR for Gucci, FLOCKA, etc. That’s just a fact.

It absolutely was repopularised by Lil B, I was there for it. My understanding at the time was that it was a reclamation of the word from an original slang meaning of being strung out on crack. Lil B was celebrated ironically by the 4channers that later propagated the right wing appropriation of the term. I always interpreted that to refer to being strung out on ‘the red pill’ i.e. being unapologetically fascist.

Quality won’t increase relative to official methods because it’s already more or less at parity with them. If the file you watch is tagged as a WEB-DL, in most cases it’s identical to the file you’d be streaming via official methods in terms of quality. It’s just remuxed into an open container format like .mkv (the video and audio streams are losslessly copied into a file format which can be shared)

Paying a portion later means more cash can flow through the business and provide utility today. Your post implies that every business operating this way is effectively insolvent without access to credit, but even if your employer has the money to pay for the raw materials today, it generally isn’t in their best interest to do so