The main issue, I think, is that people don't respond to it as Tom intended. 'Buying' the region is a mostly OOC term. IC, the idea was that your character had bribed his way to an irrefutable claim on the region, stronger than anyone else's, which was then enforced by local officials. The reality is that characters treat it the OOC way just the same, as characters buying up regions simply because they have the money.
