Abusing foreign domains for vanity purposes is still the ugly greed I'm complaining about. Especially the geniuses who would buy domains attached to anti-enlightenment, anti-liberal cultures that can pull your product/site for any caveman reason.

While I agree there are some bad examples of TLD abuse, the British Indian Ocean Territory is not so much a country as a military outpost. The native inhabitants were forcibly removed decades ago, and in the very unlikely event they were ever repatriated I think it's unlikely they would stick with the name "British Indian Ocean Territory". The TLD .io would essentially go unused if foreign registration weren't allowed.