"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
Politics is a branch of philosophy about how societies should be governed. If you want to make a social commentary that is non political, you would have to avoid mentioning how society is or should be run. Also, how people should organise together.
Where I would love to see micro-transactions be a thing is news articles, videos, and other creative works. I'm happy to pay for someone's work, especially if I'm not paying a bunch of overhead to some shitting credit card company. At the same time, I have no wish to pay for a $20 monthly subscription for the local newspaper in Middleofnowhere, Montana just so I can read one article.
Clearly this should go on some other community with no subscribers. That way your message is neatly filed away somewhere nobody else will see it, especially me. I'm just in favor of proper sorting, that's all! /s
I think a lot of Eastern European socialist states had ton of bribes (or sometimes "gifts") to get anything done, including in some places "gifts" to your doctor.
Unfortunately Marx didn't eliminate all the micro transactions
Or you had a friend who worked at the store or the factory and could get you stuff because they liked you. A hundred friends could get you further than a hundred roubles.
I really tried to like it for years. Bought it on suggestion from a friend. Couldn't enjoy a game that has a timer constantly dictating what I do and how I do it, had the same problem with Bully. Great game, if I was given free reign of my own actions instead of a time-limited version.
Also, I'm getting a bit tired of pixel graphics, been looking at them for the better part of 30 years. Time to move on.
Lootboxes are legalized gambling for minors. So yeah, no shit it works. Just because a thing is profitable doesn't make it good. The opioid epidemic proved very profitable, but just like gambling for kids, doesn't make it a thing we should accept or want for our society.
Well, theres "working" and theres "working well". Capitalism is not working so well anymore and its likely going to work worse as time goes on. more things will become automated, wealth inequality (and therefore a gap in political power) will grow, and companies will keep expecting increased growth in a world of limited(and in some cases, decreasing) resources. Capitalism currently "works" in the sense that its making resources move around, but thats about all its doing for regular, non rich, non well off people(and often is not doing even that much for them). It's simply not sustainable when unregulated, thats why we need a well regulated economy.
Astrox Imperium (this is a single player version of EvE Online, so definitely not for everyone)
Dyson Sphere Program
Factorio
UFO:AI (admittedly this is a FOSS XCOM game that started as a clone of XCOM Apocalypse, and morphed into something bigger)
All developed by either a single person, or tiny teams with basically no start up capital. I'm sure I can find more, since the FOSS list of games is enormous.
Labor develops society. Capital enshittifies society.