Succinctly, I would say any GM who says 'I don't want to spend my time thinking about the in-game world' is just someone who would be happier as a player but is taking one for the team. In the metaphor, he's the guy at the orgy squeezing a fleshlight between his thighs and wearing a wig so his buddies can pretend. He's trying to be creative with what's lying around. However, everyone would be happier if he wasn't in that position. They're all just too desperate to go elsewhere. I mean, it's really nice of the guy to do that for his friends, but it's not really what they showed up for.
One of the big issues is that tariffs are protectionist in the same way as a space suit. Yeah, if the outside is hostile, it can protect you, but you better have things inside the suit already working to provide you with everything you need or you'll end up far, far worse off.
First off, why do you want to stick of to Canada. They, by and large, have been good neighbors to the US. The only people who get angry at Canada are usually Canadians.
That aside, limiting imports limits supply, likely increasing prices for whatever product has been limited. It's not that different from the tariffs, as far as the consumer is concerned. The big difference is that it sets up a first mover benefit for the exporters/importers (if you get your whole supply across before the cutoff, you get to sell all of it, whereas later sellers might only be able to get part of their supply across. Faster companies benefit from this, to unknown effect.) as opposed to a capital/demand limit from the tariffs. (higher tariffs require higher prices, which often prices out some amount of people who would buy the item. Importers can try to narrow their unit margin or spend capital to sell more slowly. Companies with more capital can find it easier to afford either/both.)
Slightly surprised I didn't get more disagreement.
A prebuilt system has one benefit: the players and DM come to the table with a shared set of expectations. This is crucial for things like adventurer's league, where the players are all strangers, more or less engaging in a tournament without winners, each using the others to get their RPG rocks off, and can be useful to skip the mechanical design level of play-making. It also makes sense for a corporation to try to hit that lowest common denominator to maximise their audience.
However, I maintain, if no one at the table is creative enough to want to world-build beyond that, they might as well all just stick with consumer media. Those who don't feel the drive to create aren't suited to DMing, and a table without a DM is a hetero orgy without a woman.
There was a bit too much of it, but that actually was the reason I included the 'even the ones I like' part. Old WoD didn't pull its punches, and generally was not middle-of-the-road.
Get someone to do a very long set of interviews, thought experiments, and tests to see what makes us different in order to isolate, regardless of whether we can tell which of us holds the evil position, what areas of belief can have a position than can be objectively called evil. It'd be hilarious if, after months of testing, it turns out the only difference we have is our opinions on marmite or pineapple on pizza.
For each thing you want to buy, ask, 'is this, and and every part that makes it, from my country or one of the ones we don't have tariffs with?' If no, price increase. (You have to pay the 'bought from foreigners tax.)' If yes, no change or maybe a small price increase. (if tariffs push the international product's cost higher than the domestic's, the domestic producer may choose to expand their profit margin rather than maintain previous prices)
They said 'for pleebs' not business patriarchs. For 'pleebs' the answer is:
For each thing you want to buy, ask, 'is this, and and every part that makes it, from my country or one of the ones we don't have tariffs with?' If no, price increase. If yes, no change or maybe a small price increase. (if tariffs push the international product's cost higher than the domestic's, the domestic producer may choose to expand their profit margin rather than maintain previous prices)
Slightly unpopular opinion: All official lore is crap and should be generally ignored. (Even the stuff I kind of like) If I want to play in a world where what I can do is limited by the generic, inoffensive, middle-of-the-road, crowd-pleasing writers at some corporation I'll just play a AAA video game. The ability to be participatory in the creation and evolution of the in-game world is what makes TTRPGs different from consumer media. Why would you give that part up, but still leave yourself with all the cognitive load?
It's not age that makes you conservative, it's comfort and success. People on the older end of life tend to have advanced more in their career. In the current era, older people in America and Europe have been part of a period of relative success. People who are doing well in the current society don't want it to change. People who are struggling, do. The reason most monied interests support conservative agendas is that they are wealthy because they are suited to the current order. If they actually were to support real change, it'd cost them money.
Don't forget the vocal minority problem. The subset of people who comment on things is much smaller than the set of people who consume them. And while the threshold of effort for making comment is low, it isn't zero, so people who hold more extreme views are going to be more prevalent in the selection because the people with moderate views aren't going to have the motivation to spend 20 minutes explaining the nuanced position they have, while the 'love' and 'hate' camps will gladly spend 10 seconds on posting their simplistic view.
Add on the way modern systems work, focusing on likes, upvotes, etc. and you get short form responses getting greater engagement purely because they don't take as long to read. It's always easier to get traction with a short, maybe amusing, rehash of a common opinion than with a long dissertation on niche, complex views.
That cycles back in at the top to create a visibility bias so the people making the next round of commentary/content see the wave of love/hate and try to ride it. The result is a feedback loop with a terrible signal to noise ratio.
I'm not one to say it doesn't matter. I know the benefit good nursing provides. I'm saying, in modern culture, especially in the circles who have political, economic, and cultural power, there is, and has been for decades, a push to think of a college education as an investment product that benefits the purchaser, with little to no consideration being given to societal benefit. They are acting as if your work is not more meaningful/beneficial to society than, say, a Marketing Director. (a position of similar wage which I would say is, at least, not as beneficial, if not actually harmful to society)
Nursing, for instance, is a profession, or even a vocation, which provides tremendous societal benefit, both in the direct 'people's lives in medical settings suck less' sense and in the indirect 'people get back to health and productivity' sense. Despite this, it's not common, as far as I've seen, for governments to offer much in the way of benefits to nurses as reward for their service. There's even a tendency to, when they ask for a raise, to take an attitude of 'You should be happy. At least you get to know you're helping people. We need all these extra profits to help compensate us for doing our jobs that don't help people.'
Mostly as an aside, I've actually thought for years that nurses and doctors who are providing direct care to patients (i.e. not people who went to Med/Nursing school and then went into medicine-adjacent business, but people putting in direct labor to help heal people) should have a significant tax cut. Their work benefits society more than the money it would represent, and a cut would make their lives easier, and help balance the years of tuition and effort it takes to get to that position.
In the current system, education isn't viewed as a system of societal improvement but as a product to improve the standing of the individual. Because the individual is seen as the only one who benefits from their education, the individual pays for it.
Succinctly, I would say any GM who says 'I don't want to spend my time thinking about the in-game world' is just someone who would be happier as a player but is taking one for the team. In the metaphor, he's the guy at the orgy squeezing a fleshlight between his thighs and wearing a wig so his buddies can pretend. He's trying to be creative with what's lying around. However, everyone would be happier if he wasn't in that position. They're all just too desperate to go elsewhere. I mean, it's really nice of the guy to do that for his friends, but it's not really what they showed up for.