I appreciate your message at the end :) One of the things I appreciate about lemmy is the conversations are not assumed adversarial like they are on most socials.

I see what you’re saying, and I agree microtransactions deserve to burn in hell. I also realize that people have an issue with realizing an addiction, even their own, and even when they’re “aware” of it. I don’t want to point the finger at other larger societal issues as a default strategy, but we do have hard evidence from other countries where these issues get caught earlier because of public campaigns combating the stigma around such problems in tandem with the social safety net required to truly fix them.

I don’t think gambling is good, I’m not even fully convinced that the csgo cases should persist, and my intent is not to convince you they should. My stance is purely philosophical/logical in the sense that limitations should not be placed on the public with the sole justification of protecting a subset, especially children, since it is the parents’ entire role as guardian to protect them from the hardships in life. I’m sure I’m ignoring the nuance in my stance by saying that, but the general idea is there; something being bad for some people should not be the only reason nobody can have it, and that goes for drugs, art, communication, bed times, expression, etc. I know they’re problems worth protecting the affected subsets from, but legislative blanket bans are not the correct tool.

Glad to hear all is well, by the way. Addiction is a hell of a disease and gambling especially can have quite the blast radius. I hope you don’t see me as an enemy