The physical game absolutely does not have this issue.

1. First of all, you could print proxies when playing with friends to try out card.

2. You could buy individual cards from other players or your local game shop.

3. You could sell your cards.

The previous iteration (MTGA) had both 2 and 3 as part of the game. What's more, they would let you "cash out" your digital cards for physical cards.

You were not required to get cards by opening packs (which I agree is the ancestor of digital loot boxes). But Arena got rid of any way of getting cards outside of "lootboxes" because they want to get as much money out of your as possible, not because it's better for the game.

You could still buy individual cards from people who opened physical packs which meant that the price of a booster box didn't hurt so bad. You could sell a bunch of cards in it and the whole system worked because everyone had 10-100x more cards than they could ever use, creating a great secondary economy.

That's true - i've not thought about the secondary market. This doesn't exist with digital goods - something i think is missing in the laws governing consumer rights today imho. It's not just trading cards, but everything.

I think it's high time that the first sale doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine) be applied to digital goods.

When people want a specific physical MtG card they will purchase it from another person or broker, not open loads of packs hoping to get it.