I think that interestingly what is desired is a sort of impossible equality- that the devs make available for a reasonable cost to crown farming players all of the gear.

The dialectic we're really looking at is between the wealthy investors of the game and the common human that plays the game. The investors purely want money without regards to us or our desires as they exist under a capitalism, and we (as the OP puts it) purely want equality between players without regards to the investors or their desires or their money. Without them, "WE" would build a utopia where people earn costumes and pallet changing items without gambling, create more content, and yet without investors, the developers cease to exist due to lack of funding. Their ambitions grind to a screeching hault.