Adam Smith lived from 1723 - 1790, so assuming you are refering to the 1950-1960 best sellers novel of Atlas Shrugged, you have it backwards of who is supporting who. :wink:
I don't think you have the proper understanding of inflation. What you described is simple price fluctuations. The main source of inflation is when extra money is created into the economy (quests, npc vendors) or there is less supply on sale, and deflation when money is destroyed (eg: dynamsis, chocobos) or there are surplus of products on sale. Simple exchange of gil between sellers and buyers does not affect inflation. While you argue a gilbuyer will spend their money more generously, the opposite can also be argued. I would value my gil more if I had to spend real money to get it, but this varies person to person. Even if they did spend it more, this would simply cause price fluctuations, but not real inflation because the volume of money being exchanged is the same and amount of products on sale is same.
That's your point of the game. My point of the game is certainly not to earn gil. I hate earning gil and if that was a main point I would never play. Main points of the game to me is questing, lvling, meeting people, visiting friends, exploring, and having fun in general. Slaving to earn virtual money isn't fun nor a game to most people.
Time spent farming in game or time spent working in the real world to earn the gil, what difference does it really make? Either way its work and not fun. I prefer the Japanese view on gilbuying, do what you are best at. If you are better at earning money in game with your time do that, or if you are better at earning money in real life and then buying your game money do that. Either way you are doing work, at least this way minimizes the time spent doing tedious work for the player and maximizes time spent doing fun activities. The problem stims from how the gilsellers supply the money (eg: monopolizing nms, selling products to npcs causing inflation instead of just doing a straight trade from player to player). If IGE did nothing but trade gil from one player to another with a middle man transaction fee, the inflation problem would have nothing to do with gilselling but simply SE's in adequate gilsinks in the economy.
Rones said:
I am really unsure where you are coming from with this question. Cyber criminials are malicous hackers, spammers, and thieves. Gil buyers (or buying an video game property with rl money) is hard to group with cyber criminials. Yes, it is against the ToS, but that alone doesn't make it morally wrong. Just look at Everquests2's new view on purchasing game property with real money. Hackers hurt people, while gil buying (assuming it was as I described earlier a trade between two players with a middle man) is not going to hurt others. Inflation wouldn't be a factor in gil trading if it wasn't for the way gilsellers collect gil currently. Please point out these similaties so we can get some actual discussion.
Please do instead of making unsupported insults. It is common courtesy to at least point outt what and why something is a hypocrisy rather than just accusing. I'm not even sure how 'every aspect and field of rl and the game' can even relate to a single issue. :?
Rones said:
This is actually something that has been bouncing around in the courts. The question is do the players, who have put in a great deal of work, have any right/ownership of what they earn in the video games. With the current systems that would is a definite no, but is that the way it should be? Yes, no one should profit directly from SE's game (pirating product), but what about the items/gear/gil players earn in game. If the courts decide in favor of the gamer, we will see something of a 180 on this entire situation. As the net develops and ownership becomes less and less tangible I could see this coming about someday.
Rones said:
Except that isn't possible. Anything that humans put time and effort into gains value. So while we can try to say digital data like this has no value, if demand, supply, and the effort to create the item say otherwise, it gains value. We all value our items we earn, and that gives them value. :wink:
