Crypto is nascent and I would expect finger burning as part of the path to long term stability. I'm not personally wedded to any of the current implementations in their current versions, but long term the concept of crypto currency supplants governmental fiat money

Then the market decided that the new chain was more valuable than the original. Still decentralized. Forks are fair game.

Hence why crypto can't be taken seriously as a currency. Imagine explaining to a non tech family member or friend why their dollars have zero value now because they’re on the wrong chain.

That's not how forks work.

If they had sold some items for Eth just before the fork, they will never recover the Eth, and they may be unable to recover the items either. So yes, in a fork people lose money.

forks set their genesis state as a snapshot of a block on the original chain. if anything you now have twice as much money since your account has funds on the old chain and the new one

Let's say you just sent someone 1000 dollars in exchange for 1 Eth, sometime close to the fork. Before the transaction, you have 1000 USD and 0 Eth. In the old block chain, the transaction goes through, your wallet has 1 Eth, and theirs has 0. In the forked block chain, their wallet has 1 Eth, your has 0. However, regardless of which block chain you choose to believe in, they have the 1000 dollars.

So if the forked chain becomes accepted, then they have 1000 USD and 1 Eth, while you have 0 dollars and 0 Eth, and you're never going to make the mistake of trusting a cryptocurrency ever again.