Well, FWIW, you can run OS-X in a VM on Apple hardware, using VMware Fusion (the Mac version of VMware Workstation). I think the versions of OS-X you can run in the VM are limited, it used to be only server versions of Snow Leopard, but that was years ago. I haven't had occasion to do it myself, so I can't give you up-to-date info. The Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Fusion appears out of date.
In any event, once you've bought Apple's hardware, they don't much care how many copies of OS-X you run on it.
Of course, trying to run OS-X on non-Apple hardware, virtual or metal, is a whole 'nother story. :-)
You're not kidding. I had an OSX VM several years ago. The network stack was broken unfortunately, and I never could convince it to function correctly. Like I said, I'd be perfectly willing to pay cold cash for an officially sanctioned copy of OSX. I may need to look into trying to get a Fusion VM to run on Workstation. I don't know if they work. Wife has a Mac with fusion.