when i read about how much debt elon musk has taken on or massive fines for corporations undermining democracy, something just fundamentally refuses to take hold in my silly little brain
$13 billion? $787 million?
today i spent $4 on pasta and a 2 litre of RC cola
money just... ceases to have a foothold in reality beyond a certain point. smart british youtube man did a very lovely demonstration of the differences between the M and B in the illion
these numbers are just hit points of monsters battling in the world of invented purpose
fines, as shown above, only really matter to people who are near to, or already struggling to pay for X or Y. there are legitimate expensive things to consider in these regards, schooling for your kids, healthcare
(you know those things america decided to charge you for )
but there's also, like, the $34 fine i get for being $2 in the hole in my bank. guess i got some bad rolls on my starting wealth

unrelated: look at these emerald dice! this is not a metaphor
so doing 1 million hit points of damage to elon musk is a good, solid hit, maybe he's even bloodied! now roll a dexterity saving throw for being dogpiled by weird internet fascists
when you have enough money to stop thinking of it as anything other than a statistic to increase, a number to raise, minmaxing to get the best build with the MOST money; you can do anything you want, any damage you take shrugged off because of your deep HP pool
this is why, perhaps, maybe for balancing the capitalist hellscape game that is America*, we should consider some debuffs for monostatting so hard
*(but since this metaphor is mostly about 5th edition it'll probably continue to be just as unbalanced lol)
