GoodbyeBlueMonday

I had read your initial comment as insinuating the previous commenter was supporting hamas, and when someone directly challenged you on it, you didn't reject that accusation.

So if you just wanted to point out the irony, consider my comment as much a non sequitor as your comment on its irony, which is - I suppose - at least irony-adjacent in itself.

Do you get mad at geologists for explaining why volcanoes erupt and kill people?

There's a difference in understanding and supporting, or considering something morally correct.

As another example: I understand why some folks get sucked into gangs. If someone grows up in a crumbling school system, falls through the holes in whatever is left of a social safety net, has no proper familial support, and sees nothing but violence and economic despair day-to-day, joining a gang suddenly becomes a viable path to prosperity. Exceedingly dangerous, but this hypothetical teen can look around and see they're likely to have a shit future regardless, so why not take that chance, right?

So this isn't me saying that I support gang violence, but I can understand why it happens. Which is why my politics are what they are: we don't need to just beat the shit out of gang members in the streets, but give folks support so they don't feel like joining a gang is the only way to survive.

The other poster is (I think) making a similar kind of argument. What the fuck else is some kid in that situation going to grow up to be? Some folks will make it out alright, sure: but on the whole it's a recipe for despair, which often leads to horrific acts. It doesn't make the acts right, but we can understand a little more about the why.

What kind of legislation, though? Loot boxes seem like an easy one to write: gambling is illegal already in a lot of places. When it's just exploitative greed, I'm not sure how it's technically so different from charging exorbitant rates for swag at a baseball game or something. Or charging a few thousand bucks for a purse at some high-end fashion retailer.

To be clear: I loathe the FOMO trends in game development, overpriced skins, micro/macro-transactions, and all the "credit/XP boosters" type bullshit. Turning money into ingame currencies to obfuscate actual prices, the general design of games frontloading fun and then squeezing dollars out of you to feel that same high again....I'm just skeptical that there's anything to do about it from a legal perspective that doesn't apply to most of the rest of the capitalist enterprises out there. Please though, I want to be wrong about this, so any examples of how to curb some of these excesses would be great.

I'm all for it! Balancing by buffing rather than nerfing seems to be best, in most cases.

Right? Would be easy enough for a DM to just improvise if they don't want the players using everything. Big ticket items have inscriptions that terrify anyone they try to sell it to, which is itself a plot hook. Maybe it's all cursed. Or they get arrested by the local authorities on suspicion of trafficking in stolen goods. Or even just have another adventuring party steal it from them somehow.

Depends on the abilities of the party, but snatching away their spoils after they get away sounds even more fun than not letting them take it in the first place.

Minotaurs, if anything like their brahman brethren, can get nutrition from all kinds of roughage that us puny primates can't. So while we're scrambling around for nuts and goodberries, they can make a meal of all the weeds sprouting in terrible soil, and the odd hay bale lying around to feed someone's horses.

TL;DR: They could feasibly turn what we consider indigestible garbage-plants into calorie-rich milk.

No, I just didn't think the second part negated the first part. I read it as the defense being to some degree legitimate, but that he was doing so out of self-interest. I was trying to underscore how absurd his so-called defense was.

In other words, my apologies! I didn't intend for my attempt at an explanation as criticism of you, or start some pointless quibbling internet argument (because I imagine we're all tired of those). Take care out there.

While the general "can't fault a man for protecting his children" is a milquetoast statement we can all agree with, it's obfuscating what really happened.

He wasn't chasing away a coyote with a pointed stick: the dude posted a bizarre attack (name-calling, non sequiturs, claims of fraud) on attorneys and the judge for what appears to be a legitimate inquiry.

Ah, so when you said the "rest of the world", you are excluding Latin America. Where is your high horse located, and what do you think the rest of the world includes?

You're making a pretty big assumption! I've lived most of the last fifteen years in South America, so I actually do have a good hold on how folks in other nations view capitalism, and the USA's economic and political systems. My job for years was in a biological research institute that was part of the Uruguayan government, and before that for a decade I worked in small towns across the Amazon, in Peru and Colombia.

So my point from the start is that it seems inevitable that capitalists would levy their economic power to gain political power. The laissez-faire ideal sounds good (for those with capital, anyway), but without institutional protections against it, those with the most money would be dumb not to levy that money so they can rig the system.

So we're quibbling over different thresholds at which government intervention means it's no longer "Pure Capitalism", but from my perspective Regulatory Capture is kind of inevitable, without protections against that happening. So that's why I think it's just part of Modern Capitalism in most places, and an "Oligarchy with a Capitalist Facade" is just a different life-stage of Capitalism. I'm all in favor of the institutional controls against corporate takeover/influence of governmental bodies. Corporate lobbying is a cancer, because it's drowning out the public's voice in politics.