There is a fallacy of argument that stretches the results of a suggested path to irrationally extreme lengths.  Some call it a slippery slope fallacy (though there are some slippery slopes).  Some just call it a red herring.

My view is that a sim should sim.

It is a common rule in fantasy or simulated baseball, to cap the number of moves a GM can make.  That could be done, here.

Once again, I am not against a demotion penalty.  I am very much for players being allowed to snap-back -- and to gain from being sent back to the minors to get game-time experience at a comfortable level, along with focused coaching, just as in real baseball.

I could talk about extreme problems with the way it currently is.

GM's can demote and promote players now, over and over again, until they are permanently and severely crippled.

Such a GM might  be banned, but only after they have severely hurt their franchise and actually hurt their HBD world.

My 2-cents' worth . . . . The SIM is pretty good at applying the CB and MLB rules. SO you can't bounce players back and forth between the ML team and AAA - unless there are injuries - which happen. I DO agree with the core suggestion that the demotion penalites are sometimes harsh and feel arbitrary. Regular playing time is - I think, anyway - a key to player development, so a demotion for the purpose of getting a player regular appearances, innings or AB's should not - in my view - result in a penalty.

It has to be a penalty, for reasons already discussed.

Because these are not players you can sit down and say "kid, you'll make it, just play hard for a year", the 40 would be a 25. Like Mike said.

In real life, if you yank around 30 of your 40 man roster by flying them back and forth to Norfolk every 10 days, I'm sure you'd see a performance decline.

If you're flying 15 each way all season, I'd say pay once for a virtual jet and a fuel tank.

Haha, buying air transportation for your team.  Then maybe we can manage the marketing campaigns, concessions, and improvements to our ballpark.

My suggestion was tongue in cheek but, if you only wanted minor demotion penalties, that would be one way to keep owners from non-stop promotion/demotion.   Eat up that budget with each move.

Nope. Think in reverse what happens with prospect budget for IFA. Now you have people shoving money in payroll to do the unlimited promotion/demotion.

I'm well aware of that.  However, tankers gonna tank so you can't stop them from transferring payroll to prospect.  But, in this case, owners would be doing it to WIN more games.   So, if they're going to make 25 promotions/demotions(total of 50), they're spending half a million in payroll money to do it.    When is owners trying to win BL games a bad thing?

Gaming the system. Anything that does it regardless of whether it's gamed to win now or gamed to win later, it's still gaming it.

Don't we all "game" the system?    I'd rather people do it in an effort to win than an effort to get a high pick.