Capitalism: where manipulating people to make purchases is normal and acceptable

I actually respect Riot Games ability to create a half-decent, polished game, but they are so money-focused it's disgusting. There was an update recently in which the company offered "free skins" to players.

Teemo and Fizz have had their original art added to the Store as free skins! Please note, because these skins are offered in a bundle that includes 3 copies of the champion, the price of the bundle will be shown as 300 Coins if you do not own 3 copies of either Teemo or Fizz. The price of the bundle will be reduced to 0 Coins if you own 3 copies of the respective champion.

So, in reality these "free skins" are not really free... but they could have easily been if they really wanted them to be free. They could have just as easily offered the skins as part of an entirely free bundle (it's not like their hands were tied from a technical standpoint) but they chose to add them coupled with other things that you must also have, otherwise there will be a cost — all just to squeeze out a few extra dollars from people. It's fine to sell things but masquerading things as free when they're not is just slimy (especially in this case where the original skins they are "making free" have always been free until this change — they are replacing them with less visually desirable skins (that will be the "new" default free ones) so that there is incentive to now buy the previously once-free ones to get the cooler look back). All that extra ridiculousness aside, that we allow such a great deal of deception and manipulation to occur with advertising — and that we've grown so accustom to it be deceptive that most of us don't bat an eye — is one of our bigger failings as a society.

Fake currency and price mismatching

Or take their shop, which first of all uses an intermediate pseudo-currency ('coins' in this case, which of course you have to buy with real money) to spend on all store items. This is done for several reasons:

1. Fake is easier to spend: Fake currency makes it easier for people to spend money because once converted from actual dollars, it's no longer "real" money, so we naturally exercise less caution in spending it.
2. Sunk-cost fallacy: Since it feels like we've already spent our "real" money in buying 'coins', we're more likely to feel like we may as well make our investment worthwhile by maximizing the use of our 'coins'. This means it is more likely we will spend all our coins when we have them to justify the investment, and less likely we'll leave excess coins unspent in the short term. Understand: this would not happen if the 'coins' where just real money. In that case, we wouldn't mind spending carefully because we see it as money we have not spent yet.
3. Coin purchase amounts and item cost mismatches: Riot deliberately mismatches the quantities of coins you can buy and the price of products in the store, so you always have leftover coins, which means you always end up paying more for the thing you purchased, and — because you don't want to let those extra coins go to waste — you feel compelled to get something else, which may very well cause you to buy more coins.

Neoliberal "free market" economics assumes that the decisions people make are all "rational choices" with no meaningful influences whatsoever, but this archaic belief system is clearly wrong, as shown by the last hundred years of social and psychological science. The reality is that manipulation is everywhere and though many of us recognize it, were are so used to it that no one bats an eye at it any more, and companies then are constantly pushing the limits as to what they can do in terms of manipulation. The worst offenders (companies who manipulate to extreme levels in advertising) are sometimes scolded or fined, and occasionally a legal ruling occurs which bans the most egregious forms of deceit, but as long as we continue the way we are chasing money above all else, companies will always want to manipulate as much as they can to obtain more money, and lawmakers will constantly have to fight back with legal protections (in the same way as how companies are still polluting / destroying the environment, and lawmakers are always behind them trying to clean up after the fact). Is this what we really want to do for all eternity? How about we design a better system that does not incentivize manipulation in the first place? (This is in fact exactly what we are doing at my non-profit, Infinite Love.)