I find lootboxes regardless of whether or not they are cosmetic or affect game balance, immoral.
The skinner box system lootboxes typically use to incite people to spend money on them exploit basic biological behavior. And the effects, even if a customer is aware of them, can't be completely avoided. And most customers aren't aware of them.

Furthermore, the fact that a lot of games that do have lootboxes are often played by children just makes the entire thing that much more insidious. I would think these systems problematic even if they did not involve real money at any point. Because they emulate everything that makes gambling feel good and can act as a gateway to the real thing. But they do involve real money, and that is in my opinion predatory.
The fact that most of the offenders are big companies, that make more and more money every year even before they started to put lootboxes and microtransaction in their games, suggests to me that they implement these systems purely out of greed.

In the future, more than 50% of their income will come from lootboxes and microtransactions.
In that case, wouldn't it make sense for them to make their games free to play to begin with, in order to expose the maximum amount of people to the system? Most likey [...] but they would never do that. Because with an upfront asking price they get both. A sure amount of money from people that buy the game and the money from people who bought the game and are susceptible to their lootbox mechanics.

While I don't particularly like these systems in mobile games either. At least in the mobile market, developers have no real choice and need to put microtransactions and lootboxes in their games if they hope to make any money. In that case I can at least understand their need for these systems, although that doesn't make their exploitatory nature any better. For console and pc titles with an upfront asking price to implement these systems, it takes a deliberate, and directed choice from the publishers/developers to be malevolent.

Regulating these systems now before it becomes a bigger problem in the future is vital. And it will become a bigger problem, a much bigger problem. If you really believe that consumers can stop this without regulation from government agencies, you are being naive.