Probably want to sit on stuff a bit after its stolen to make it less hot. Some stuff probably gets left in a corner or is harder to sell. Alternatively The intention is to steal a whole bunch then ship it overseas or across country and resell in a different region entirely.

I've played plenty of games that would be worth 100+ easily. The problem for a studio pricing something at that though is they need some way to sell me on the game. A demo, or like, first party Nintendo quality reputation. Something. No way I pay that as a default for a piece of shit, which most things released are.

Best guess? Just avoiding being sued. Something being a false statement is a matter of fact that's easily proven. Something being a lie requires proving state of mind. In the US I can't imagine actually winning such a suit, but its still safer to cover asses.

The transformer technology did come built for a specific purpose, automated translation.

High value customers don't eat at Mcdonalds.

Gaming actually provides a real benefit for people, and resources spent on it mostly linearly provide that benefit (yes some people are addicted or etc, but people need enriching activities and gaming can be such an activity in moderation).

AI doesn't provide much benefit yet, outside of very narrow uses, and its usefulness is mostly predicated on its continued growth of ability. The problem is pretrained transformers have stopped seeing linear growth with injection of resources, so either the people in charge admit its all a sham, or they push non linear amounts of resources at it hoping to fake growing ability long enough to achieve a new actual breakthrough.

I don't agree with most western philosophies of prison, the US is probably the worst amongst them (but most of that comes at the state level), I was just highlighting that Japan isn't in some way uniquely bad for 'western' law systems. Indeed, conviction rate is a really hard stat to do any sort of apples to apples comparison for because different countries count and report it different ways.

This is one of those laws where I fundamentally disagree with the state having the power to make laws like this because the power will be misused, but in this instance, I actually think the law seems fine? Its not just exposing actual luxurious lifestyles like you imply, its also people going into debt to fake a higher level of lifestyle than they actually live, and this self perpetuates through social media like a virus.

The conviction rate is 99.3%. By only stating this high conviction rate it is often misunderstood as too high—however, this high conviction rate drops significantly when accounting for the fact that Japanese prosecutors drop roughly half the cases they are given. If measured in the same way, the United States' federal conviction rate would be 99.8%.[14][15][16]

From wikipedia.

Lego is so old that the patent on lego expired like a decade ago. Now you have alternatives like https://mouldkingcorp.com/

If you travel internationally you really should scan a checklist for banned products. Especially around food and produce if you intend to bring any, there is always something on there.

Yeah... I don't think there is actually good proof that something being illegal actually stops a meaningful number of things on its own. There are plenty of studies that people do things that are socially frowned upon less IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE (say littering for example), but very weak evidence it stops such activity in any meaningful way in private settings. Likewise there is plenty of evidence that other forms of punishment (which is to say, no immediate social stigma) actually don't really correlate with reduced activity at all.