victims don’t “encourage” their abusers. these are predatory practices designed to hook in as many people vulnerable to gambling addiction as possible. you have a misconception about the people that get hooked into these things. most of them are not “idiot gamers” nor oil barons, they are either children or neurodivergent people.
It’s naive to think that someone is at fault for falling prey to the psychological tactics publishers use to push people toward micro transactions.
If you think about it, it’s really not that different from saying people with gambling addictions deserve to be broke. Microtransactions might seem like an obvious scam to a lot of people, but a lot of people fall it and waiving it away and saying they deserve it will only make the problem worse.
While there are gamers hooked on gambling machines, the industry will continue to produce more and more blatant gambling machines… instead of actual balanced games.
I think tacking on irrelevant laws onto popular bills to get them passed shouldn’t be allowed.
Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks, especially when they’re in a position to pass laws that would directly affect their holdings.
Super PACs, it’s absolutely wild that that’s a thing IMO.
I think there should also be a “cooling off” period of some sort over passing/repealing laws. I’m thinking as an example of the Republicans after Obamacare was passed, when they tried to repeal it something like 70 times in 10 years. I get that things change and laws sometimes need to be amended or updated, but there should really be some system in place to prevent people from spamming up the whole system like that.
Requiring agreement to some unspecified ever-changing terms of service in order to use the product you just bought, especially when use of such products is required in the modern world. Google and Apple in particular are more or less able to trivially deny any non-technical person access to smartphones and many things associated with them like access to mobile banking. Microsoft is heading that way with Windows requiring MS accounts, too, though they're not completely there yet.
Honestly? Alcohol. I used to work security at a rehab, and it was always the worst addiction. The withdrawls are horrible, up to and including death. Yes, even worse than heroin.
I am in my late 30s. Drank in college with friends at parties. I dont anymore just not into it. I like things that make me faster, smarter, or stronger. I dont understand why all TV shows and movies seem to be centered around drinking when its a social scene. (I live in north america). Nothing good comes from drinking alcohol. They make it seem like if you’re relaxing or want to have fun you need alcohol. I just need a good brisket for both those.
Read up on US prohibition and how it funded the Mafia. It just changes the form of the societal disease.
The answer to addiction is having support and care on place for those that fall to it so society helps pick them up again. You can’t stop the abuse of substances unless you fix why people are crawling into a hole to avoid the world. Lack of mental health is a disease of society as well as the individual.
Its so mad that we have such a literal example of exactly what happens, due to prohibition, yet society refuses to see like for like. The mafia simply used the exact same routes to smuggle heroin. They didn’t disappear or die out, due to alcohol prohibition ending. They got into bed with the CIA, under operation gladio. What they did with crack wasn’t the first or the biggest example.
Like you said, you can’t people abusing substances. They remain illegal because somewhere some very powerful people are making too much money from them remaining so.
Why? Simply because this was actually tried in America? All I’m doing is answering the question. Just because this country failed at making it illegal does not mean it still shouldn’t be illegal.
People are allowed to make their own decisions, even if they’re bad decisions. And it shouldn’t be illegal because it has been proven that making it illegal only makes everything worse.
“By buying [unnecessary product] you will help [marginalized group] to gain a livable income and also send their kids to school instead of sending them to [work place with - even for adults - horrible work conditions]. Also, when buying [product] we will save [arbirtary area] of [rainforest/ coral reef/ mangrove swamp] that would otherwise have been destroyed [but not by us]. Additional to that, your purchase helped us to save [arbitrary ammount of CO2 - at least in a completely hypothetical scenario]. While using [product] you will make the world a better place.”
As a customer there is barely any way you can ensure or check that these things are true. It cannot be possible to save the enviroment while buying stupid products like, for example, internet-of-shit-devices which will be phased out in no time or single use products made from plastic or other harmful materials that are not recycleable.
All these claims are just an indulgance trade - like it is done for centuries in a religious context. It is just that you have an excuse to consume more, because they to something to help people/ enviroment. If there was a product that would have been advertised as: “Well, we irretrieveably destroyed 100 km^2^ of nature, and for each single product in average two workers died and at end-of-life this product will fuck up the environment once more - also it will impair your health just by existing”, it would be horrible - but at least it would be honest.
It defintly is a slippery slope. I work for a municipalitylies utilities company. Part of my job is working with a utilities companies union to lobby politicians to make laws that will actually improve the way we can work. I think we actually do improve things for the German public by bringing desperately needed knowledge to the table.
But I think we are a small minority among lobbying institutions.