GoodbyeBlueMonday

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.

We don't disagree: there's a short-sightedness that causes folks to say things like "once the boomers die out, things will be great". There are systemic issues that gauze the greed and fear and violence, and the folks that get swept up in these movements are in large part products of their environment, as we all are.

So we need to change the environment, but otherwise well-meaning folks don't want it to change because they benefit from it, even when they are vaguely aware that there are monsters out there that keep it that way. I'd like to think there's more liberals/moderates who would be allies against fascism if this kind of thing can be communicated in a way that doesn't alienate folks, but I'm also sympathetic to arguments that fiery language is necessary to rattle people out of comfort zones... So in sum, thanks for the good discussion.

Call it pedantry if you want, but the fascists themselves are what truly "makes fascism possible".

Yes, there are plenty of folks have culpability in allowing these fucks gain control, from short-sighted collaborators who just want profit, idiots who think "they can't really be that bad", but there's an extent to which I think we should be careful about victim-blaming well-meaning (but naive) folks who believe that Liberty and Justice will win the day (being misled by whitewashed historical narratives who erase the boots on the ground required to make social and political changes - and the organization necessary to resist the rise of fascists).

I get your point, and clearly (from the paragraph I just typed) agree to an extent - I just think it's reductive to the point of undermining the movements against fascism when "liberals" all get thrown in the same basket.

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.

I don't see it as delusion, but being realistic.

What you and I do today is meaningless in the grand scale of the universe, and likely has a tiny effect on what happens to someone living a hundred years from now.

That doesn't mean that what we do doesn't have a more immediate impact.

Make your neighbor's day better, because while it won't matter in a million years, it matters now. So who cares if it costs you a few extra minutes of your life, it makes theirs better, and nothing means anything in the long run anyway, right? So why not make it easier for everyone else here, now? Making other people feel better feels good, so everyone wins, and we can better enjoy what time we have.

Government intervention in the economy doesn't mean it's not Capitalism IMHO: I see that as an unnecessarily restrictive definition. I think of capitalism in more broad terms as being for-profit private ownership of trade/industry.

I can agree that there's some theoretical upper limit at which Crony Capitalism turns into an outright Corporate State, but I don't think we're quite there yet, and hopefully we can avoid it (as much as we seem to be headed that way, unfortunately).

Facade isn't accurate IMHO. Capitalist Oligarchy is fine though. Maybe a subtle distinction, but I think it's important.