I don't think it's a placebo effect. Buffers do a tangible thing. They set input impedance and increase the gain in a signal. Turning on a low or high pass filter does something tangible. Depending on how they're used/designed they'll cut frequencies, which gives the impression of emphasizing others. A charge pump changes the voltage in the circuit. I think this one gets bumped up to 15v (I could be wrong about that). Usually this gives the impression of headroom. If you've ever tried something like the Hudson broadcast, the charge pump in it is switchable from 9v to 27v - it's a huge change.

I probably should have mentioned that your original post calls this circuit magical and mysterious and I was partially responding to that. It's not. It looks over-engineered and I'm dubious that it does something that a different buffer or even an eq pedal couldn't do, but that's my own take. I don't think there's anything wrong with buying one. I have a ton of pedals. 80% of which are extremely redundant.

It's a buffer with a charge pump and three switches that drop different passive EQ filters into the circuit.

From what I can tell from the reverse engineered schematics it's a dual sided op-amp buffer (as opposed to something like a transistor based jfet buffer), kind of like what a klon uses, three passive tone filters built around dropping different cap/resistor combos into the circuit, an "effects loop" aka a buffer bypass for anything that misbehaves when the guitars output impedance is changed before the effect (range master, germanium fuzzes), and an overbuilt power section with an unusual amount of power filtering (there are so many electrolytic caps in this part).

I will not comment on whether I think it's worth the pricetag.

Nonsense. The op originally cited things like childhood mortality, water cleanliness, access to doctors. First of all, non-capitalist economies have seen equivalent change. Look at Cuba, more doctors per capita than any other country in the world. Look at China's infant mortality decline from 1950. Second, capitalism has existed for a long time. Look at an era like late 19th century gilded age America. Huge wealth surpluses but they largely went to the holders of capital, not society at large. Workers were violently repressed, living conditions were abhorrent. Social progress was made through worker action and democratic legislation, not through the allocation of capital and investment. Third, capitalism has also sought to dismantle these things. Private equity is buying up hospitals and significantly harming health outcomes for patients. Corporate lobbyists, especially for fossil fuel extraction companies, have been trying to kill environmental protections for years. Attributing capitalism with improvements to our society confuses cause and effect.

I'm not indicting capitalism. My point was that capitalism isn't responsible for the last century of social improvement.

No I'm not. Capital usually refers to the individuals or corporate bodies that control or direct investment. Capital is the anticident to capitalism.

This post is completely absurd. All of these things have happened in spite of capitalism and they've developed simultaneously in non-capitalist states. We (mostly) have access to clean drinking water because of environmental activism that forced companies to stop dumping industrial waste in bodies of water. We have access to healthcare because activists maneuvered politically to ensure it became a right, not a privilege. That's to say nothing of developing capitalist countries that offer none of these privileges to their people. Capitalism didn't give us these things. If you spend any amount of time reading about the history of labor or the development of regulatory bodies, capital has hindered social progress wherever possible to avoid any restrictions or taxation. These things were demanded and fought for by the people they were affecting. Industry and finance are owed none of the credit.