There is something else that happens with restricting RMT. Not allowing a second source of "payment" helps to keep the economy in check. When the only thing that has value within the game is time played, items get up to a certain value (which does go up over the years, at a steady rate), but this value is lower that it is if you are also able to pay for items with RL cash.
When you look at Daybreak servers like Mangler where RMT is common you find that items quickly become inflated in price to beyond what just the "time invested in game" people can afford, unless they are also Wall Street level traders and/or multiboxers on the side.
(As a side note, multiboxing also manipulates the economy of payment in the same way, effectively allowing one person's time investment to be multiplied by a factor of 6 or more per hour.)
I'm guessing that, as has already been mentioned, the folks in our demographic have overwhelmingly more RL money available than time available to spend on the game.
This leads usually to debates over whether it is more "morally" acceptable to waste hours of your life on a video game via time in front of the pc, or time working a job that gets turned into pixels. Obviously, both are equally wasteful and silly.
The way out of both traps is to enjoy the minute-by-minute with friends or solo, without focusing on illusory "outcomes". Let the items come or not come. If you aren't enjoying your trip day by day you're screwed, because this bus literally has no destination.
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