Serious Question.

[Lavi]

As I said in the first post, a person who does this provides nothing to the commmunity. They provide no service nor did the put forth any effort into crafting. There was no effort besides buying and selling. yes this is techinically legal and its part of the capatalist system. However this is a game.

Now take this for example. Lets say you are stranded on an island with a group of strangers. Some of the people are good with building things and others are good at scavenging for food and useful items. Now lets say there is one person among the group who does neither. He/she takes the items from one group and trades it to the other and profits greatly from it. This person provides no service to the community as a whole other than trading of items which can be done directly between the builders and the scavengers. Now do you think the builders are going to be mad that the trader is making a huge profit from their work while they make a meager existance? Or the scavengers either? Now if I was in this situation I would be angry that my efforts are used by someone else. I work all day to provide some service or goods while this trader does none and benefits greatly off of me. More than likely, if this were to happen the trader would die or be beaten and forced to work.

Now I know all of you are probably thinking this is extreme but its not really. A community is a community regardless of the size and can work if people put forth the effort to make it work.

And in response to Rones' post: Let me ask you a question before I can respond to you. Why is any law a law? What makes it wrong to steal? Because its immoral? But what makes it immoral? Before you can even begin to ask such a question, maybe you can answer mine first. :roll:

Also I would like to point out a historical note. In Japanese society before the influx of western culture, Japan was based upon a cast(sp?) society and the merchants were the lowest cast. They were considered the lowest even though they became the richest. Warriors/Courtiers are the highest rank behind Farmers in the second and Artisans in the third.

 

[Lavi]

And Darkdante, you are either confused about the topic or misunderstood what I wrote. Not sure but this has nothing to do with farming or lowering prices directly. Nor does it have to do with ownership. Its a matter of whether its right or wrong. And I mean morally and not legally too.

Those people you so referred I am guessing are the crafters and farmers and they deserve it more because they are the ones putting forth some effort to provide a service or goods. A trader does neither but buy and sell. No effort involved besides hitting the enter key.

 

[meeze]

Lavi, by your post we should go burn down every 7-11 and Kmart in the country, all buy direct from the manufacturer.

The fact is that if a hunter/gatherer spent time to sell his product, he would lose out on time hunting and gathering.

At the same time, the workers/builders need that slice of meat now. but the hunter is off hunting with a bunch of meat on him.

What the traders importance is, having a single location for the hunter/gather to sell his wares, and the workers/builders a place to purchase from.

that is capitalism, that is where we live, that is how this game is set up.

 

[Lavi]

Ok lets make this clearer. The people I refer to stand in front of AH buy said item, sell said item and nothing more. In 30 seconds it took to buy all of one item and sell it again on the same AH, I am pretty confident to say there was no real effort involved besides clicking enter. The item was on AH before they came and you has the same access to the item after they left but now its 100k+ more expensive. I am not referring to someone who buys La Thiene Cabbage in Bastok( they have control this week I think) and sells it in Windhurt. That is providing some form of service, a crafter trying to cook does not have to go all the way to bastok or log onto another mule.

The businesses you refer to actually provide services. They bring various items to a location near you so you have access to them whereas without them you would have to travel to the nearest slushy manufacturer(where in the world that is, I have no idea).

 

[Rones]

And in response to Rones' post: Let me ask you a question before I can respond to you. Why is any law a law?

I didn't say anything about politics or laws. So I don't see how any of your questions are in response to my post.

Before you can even begin to ask such a question, maybe you can answer mine first.

The only question I asked in this thread was why there were 0 posts giving support to it being wrong in hopes of prompting some debate. I don't see that as a true question as much as a request. Second, how am I supposed to anser your question first when you just posted them (assuming you mean the questions about laws since I don't see any other)?

Now to discuss your example. To start with:

Now do you think the builders are going to be mad that the trader is making a huge profit from their work while they make a meager existance? Or the scavengers either?...Now if I was in this situation I would be angry that my efforts are used by someone else.

No you wouldn't. You were trying to sell the product for a set rate, you got your money and would be happy. Not only that but you have instant sales thanks to him which = maximum demand. This not only gives you the ability to up the price you sell them to him, but you can produce more of your product with out fear of price dropping due to exceeding demand. As a seller, you would really appreciate this person. If you truly had feelings against what he does, you would sell them for less yourself to the others and skip the middle man, but that wouldn't happen.

Your example also has a large flaw in it. Your example describes a monopoly. In ffxi, this is not the case. He has no direct control on incoming supply. He attempts to put a crunch on it, but there is nothing stopping outsiders from flooding the market. The more he practices this, the more people will flood the item on the ah and raise their prices that he is having to pay because it is below his asking price. That is why it is an artificial crunch on supply and increase in demand. Second, people have many alternatives than buying from him. He will not be on 24/7, thus it is still possible to buy it at the lower price. You could go get the item yourself and avoid the issue entirely or buy it from bazaars.

I work all day to provide some service or goods while this trader does none and benefits greatly off of me.

He is benefitting because you are not fully utilizing the profit of your product. He is collecting the excess that you miss either in laziness or ignorance. Much like scavengers of the world, after the lion kills the zebra and has his fill, the rest move in and clean up what he missed. Are scavengeres bad creatures for not killing the creature themselves?

Japan was based upon a cast

And in the Indea caste system merchants were third tier above the 4th tier farmers. I don't see how that is relevent though. Warriors, knights, and priests have always been at top because force and religion naturally rules.

No effort involved besides hitting the enter key.

Death to all the businessmen of the world. 8) You do realize a very small percentage of society actually produces anything right? The rest of the people just figure out how to maximize the profit from said product. Putting pretty pictures on packaging is an example of people trying to make more money off someone elses product. Is that wrong?

Finally, I must point out that you totally ignored my comments about how this can actually be good for the economy:

This act occurs most often on high demand products that have dipped well below their actual value, yet do not have large supplies. It could almost be seen as an economic fix.

Not only does it fix the price on products, but can stimulate extra production. Extra production means everyone wins.

You need to keep in mind this kind of practice is not permanent. It is very temporary. If a trader tries to do it for too long, the market will get flood due to his instant purchases and he will be building up a faster than he sell it. Thus he will either go broke and be forced to his supply, resulting in an even lower price than it was before he started due to the sudden flood. Or he will run out of room due to his supply selling to slow at the higher price. Its part of economics, much like playing the stock market.

 

[Rones]

Just for FYI, I tried this about a year ago with refresh and I must say it didn't work and cost me a good chunk of money. :x So if losing money is immoral, I'm guilty.

Anyway, here is how it worked. Refresh was selling for 2.5-3k and usually 2-3 on the ah. These can be sold to npcs for 2.5k, but most dont' realize that. Refresh is also a critical spell, so the demand is extremely high if supply gets low enough (Refresh use to be 250-300k on some servers). I started by stock piling every refresh I saw come on the market and kept 1-2 up at a price of 25k. Big increase, but all quite reasonable for such a valueable spell and not that bad compared to other less usefull spells (*cough*erase*cough*).

I continued to buy up the scroll every chance I got for a week and filled up my warhouse (mh, mule, delivery boxs, ah, etc). So I was forced to ditch the excess at npcs. For the moment that was fine since they were going for 2.5k. Keep in mind I was still missing probably 1/5 of the scrolls that went through by people buying them up instantly while I was away. Eventually someone bought one of my scrolls for 25k. Suddenly everyone who had been selling them for 2.5k (to me sort of) jumped it to 5-10k. This was still undercutting my price. I could either take the hit and keep buying or start selling my stock at 5-10k and make what appears to be a profit.

Both of those had a large flaw though. The first, if I kept buying them and assuming I didn't run out of money, it would eventually reach my 25k. So now all the new ones coming on would be 25k. Yet if all the new ones are entering the market at 25k and I'm selling them at 25k, I'm no longer able to make a profit and keep demand up. Thus continuing to buy them wouldn't work. My other choice of selling them all at 5-10k was doomed too. As you can imagine, the instant I stop buying up all the supply and try to sell my product, the market will be flooded, and no one willing to pay my price again. Thus the whole venture was doomed to failure because I could not control incoming supply.

It is a lot more difficult to do than you give it credit for Lavi.

 

[Darkdante]

And Darkdante, you are either confused about the topic or misunderstood what I wrote. Not sure but this has nothing to do with farming or lowering prices directly. Nor does it have to do with ownership. Its a matter of whether its right or wrong. And I mean morally and not legally too.

Those people you so referred I am guessing are the crafters and farmers and they deserve it more because they are the ones putting forth some effort to provide a service or goods. A trader does neither but buy and sell. No effort involved besides hitting the enter key.

Does it really matter if its morally wrong? How is making any kind of money morally right? Anytime you make a profit there is gonna be somebody out there in the world saying you are making immoral profits. If we let people do that, nobody makes any money, it turns into a communist society and the people who make the moral rules become the abusers.

 

[Darkdante]

Ok lets make this clearer. The people I refer to stand in front of AH buy said item, sell said item and nothing more. In 30 seconds it took to buy all of one item and sell it again on the same AH, I am pretty confident to say there was no real effort involved besides clicking enter. The item was on AH before they came and you has the same access to the item after they left but now its 100k+ more expensive. I am not referring to someone who buys La Thiene Cabbage in Bastok( they have control this week I think) and sells it in Windhurt. That is providing some form of service, a crafter trying to cook does not have to go all the way to bastok or log onto another mule.

How are you ripping anybody off standing in front of an auction house? The very idea of an auction house is that if you don't agree to the price you don't buy it, and if you can't afford it go farm it like everyone else, or craft it.

The ONLY way that prices will ever go up is if there is somebody willing to pay for it. You seem to be pointing the finger at the wrong person. It's not the person buying and selling thats raising the price, its the person paying the infalted price.

If anything the person your pointing the finger at is "saving" the items for people that want it more, by making sure supply is greater than demand. If he sells it at a higher price then surely the people willing to pay more will be able to get it when they need it, and not have every joker in the book buy it up so fast that there is none on AH.

Thats just another way of looking at it hey?

p.s. Should the means that you get an object effect how you are able to get rid of it? Meaning if somebody gives it to you should you not be able to sell it? If you don't do the hard work for it you should'nt profit from it?

Why does the method in which you get an object matter?

 

[Synical]

Nothing wrong with this in the least. In this kind of game, with an economy driven mostly by the players, it's cut-throat sometimes and if someone wants to run the risk to try to 'control' a product, more power to them.

For example, let's say I want to 'control' the Platinum Ore market. So I go and buy every Ore in every AH for ~50k apiece. I then start turning it around for 75k each, since I have all the supply. Can I make a profit on this? Sure. But what if those that need the Ore simply say 'too rich for my blood' and don't buy the product? Now I'm stuck with a lot of returned Ores and even more gil lost in AH tax.

Playing the AH is not some foolproof magic money making option. You need to know your market and know what those who want what you're trying to control really will pay for an item. I don't think 'morals' have any place when it comes to something like this - I have no regard for Anonymous Person X who wants to buy what I'm selling.

this in a nutshell is the ending foundation of a capitalistic society. Lavi, are you Sure you really want to debate the pros and cons of capitilism over a game? entire semesters of ethics and socialism can be devoted to these kinds of arguments.

~Syn

 

[Raesvelg]

The trick is finding something that people really *WANT*, and that has a very limited supply.

Breeze Rings, for example. *cough*VANG*cough*

And yeah, I tend to think that it's an asshole thing to do. I prefer to let the crafters set the prices, not to have someone blatantly profiteering in the name of "Price Adjustments".

 

[Anttaru]

It's not wrong because we are free to sell anything for as much as we like, as we are free to buy anything we can afford. When Supplies go up in greater numbers, people have a tendancy to want to get rid of the item, so they sell for cheaper. The item thats selling for the lowest price will be the first to be sold. Doing this is a very exciting venture, and it really can backfire on you if others start to reduce the price. it's a no win situation for the game developers, this is why they beefed up the tax in Jeuno.

 

[Padington]

I think it's wrong because not everyone can devote hundreds of hours of their lives to slaving for a few gil to buy what they need just to get invites. We pay to play this game and by this fact we have a real and vested interest it so when someone does what Lavi described they are in effect "stealing" from us all. Agree with me or not you bitch just as loud and hard as we all do when you save for an item only to find the price has gone up 50% to 100% overnight. I sell items for what I paid for them whenever I up-grade my gear because screwing other people over never profits anyone. I'm done preaching now :wink:

 

[Rones]

Agree with me or not you bitch just as loud and hard as we all do when you save for an item only to find the price has gone up 50% to 100% overnight

I don't hear 'bitching' when the product/item/armor someone is going off to sell jumped 100% overnight. For every price change someone benefits and someone loses be it the buyer or the seller, that is an unavoidable aspect of economics.

 

[Lavi]

Good and services. Two seperate things that people can trade. Someone who provides advertising for another so they can sell their product better or faster IS providing something. Its called a service. The seller provides the product. The issue I refer to is someone who buys and sells an item, the only thing they do is provide something already available at a higher price. Now when you "tore appart" my arguemtent you forgot to remember when stranded on an island, you economics book is useless. No one all of a sudden goes to an island and thinks to themselves "How can I make a capatalist society while stranded here?"

Yes Rones they would be mad. You don't get stranded on an island and immediately make a capatalist society. The FIRST instinct is to make a society where every provide some sort of work for the over all community and if you think for an instant you can tread water by trading people service you yourself do not supply, you are sorely mistaken.

Now I am not sure where you get the idea that business men/women provide nothing. They provide services so that something can be bought or sold or made. Now to argue that this person was adjusting the price is grossly misleading. If the person wanted to do that they would craft new pieces and resell them at a higher price. With the limited quantity of such items it is very possible to do so. The people that do this are not crafters or atleast high level crafters. They want a quick way to make gil that is easily obtainable. You say that this is much like the stock market but the thing with the stock market is there is risk. There is none if you have a head on your shoulders. You tried doing the same thing with Refresh scrolls however that was a poor decision. Refresh scrolls are cheap because they drop like rain. Why would anyone pay for something they can get with no effort? However this is not the case with high level craft items or NM drops. You compare it to trading in real life however this is grossly misleading. In real life a stock often fluctuates because the company may do good one quarter because of a new product or poorly the next because of a failed product. There are mitigating factors involved in this. With in game items its very different. Would you ever argue something like the PCC is a crappy item? No because its known that it is the best neck armor for any melee hands down. Will the price ever go down? No. The supply is none existant and the demand is enormous. There is no risk in doing something like this unless you are an idiot.

Now a large portion of you seem to think if something is legal then it is morally correct and the oppsite, if something is illegal then it is immoral, must also be true. This is an incorrect assumption. There are many laws that are immoral and there are things that are immoral that are not laws.

Now back to my original point which has been always this: You don't get money for nothing. Money should be earned and not given and in this case, this money was not earned. The person may have made a wise decision but that doesn't warrant making large amounts of gil at anothers expense. Someone else had to farm the gil so he/she could get those items and someone else did not. Show me the service this person provided. Now to you this may seem trivial but what if someone had an infinite supply of gil and did this on a grand scale? Imagine every single item on the server began increasing in price by a 100k gil. I think you would be annoyed and pissed off, but hey, since its not immoral and its totally legal you should just grin and bear it...

Or how about this. What if I opened a convenience store next to 7-11 and bought all the breakfast items first thing every morning and resold them in my store for $1 more. Think people would be mad? Why? I did nothing wrong. I am morally correct, right? They might not be buy my food but what about those people who are addicted to there morning danish and can't live without it? I guess they should grin and bear it too...

Its a community game and I always wondered what it would be like if all the greedy SOB's just left. But I guess it'll never happen. Call me a dreamer but I expect more from people but all I ever see is less.

 

[Peregrine]

If you think it's fine, you have waiting for you a nice penitentiary cell when you grow up.

 

[Rones]

Now when you "tore appart" my arguemtent

Don't try to quote phrases that no one has even used.

If the person wanted to do that they would craft new pieces and resell them at a higher price

Wrong. If it was that simple they would do it already, but they have no control over incoming supply. Just because one individual crafter decides to raise his price is not going to work. This where businessmen in rl or your trader in game come into play. They have the ability to control/limit the supply. This prevents producers from getting in such a tight price competition to beat out each other that they stop making profits (which is exactly what has happened with 95% of crafteable items in game).

Lets look at video cards for example. There are many different companies that produce the same model video card. All these companies could compete with each other back and forth offering lower prices, but they reach a point of no profits. This is where companies like Nvidia and ATI come in. Nvidia and ATI both have their manufactures beneath them. They regulate supply and pricing to prevent an internal price war among producers of the same product. Without this organization, they would wipe each other out. OPEC fills a similiar roll if you are familiar with it, organizing oil pricing to prevent it from bottoming out and controling supply.

Now a large portion of you seem to think if something is legal then it is morally correct and the oppsite,

Where has anyone brought up legal issues to support their argument? Please quote this 'large portion' you are referring too. No one has even said 'law' besides you.

The person may have made a wise decision but that doesn't warrant making large amounts of gil at anothers expense. Someone else had to farm the gil so he/she could get those items and someone else did not. Show me the service this person provided.

I have three times already, but I can already tell you aren't reading my posts. :roll:

Just to repeat: they provide the seller an instant buyer, maximum demand for sellers, they can sell their good to the buyer for more than usual because of what he is doing. Also, when the buyer who paid for the item in question goes to later sell it (like most people do with gear eventually in this game) they will get more money back. Gear and items are an investment, the money isn't destroyed, they can retrieve it simply by selling it again which is an added bonus over rl.

Imagine every single item on the server began increasing in price by a 100k gil. I think you would be annoyed and pissed off, but hey, since its not immoral and its totally legal you should just grin and bear it...

I would be glad I have a lot of gear and items that are suddenly worth a lot more than before. Ultimately what you are describing though is massive inflation. The problems that would result would be independet from the extra cost of items, but the fact that the buyer just pumped 10s of billions of extra gil into the economy. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that inflation on that scale is bad.

What if I opened a convenience store next to 7-11 and bought all the breakfast items first thing every morning and resold them in my store for $1 more. Think people would be mad? Why? I did nothing wrong. I am morally correct, right?

Basic economics would stop you without any moral crusading necessary. Seeing that the 7-11 now has maximum demand it would increase its stock as much as possible and raise the price for you to buy out its stock. This would in turn cause you to eventually go bust (see there is a risk) and the pricing would go back to normal after you are no longer able to buy out its stock (if not lower do to the sudden surplus of food). Same thing happens with crafted goods if you try to buy them out for too long.

Call me a dreamer but I expect more from people but all I ever see is less.

You see less because you are unable to see both sides. There is a buyer and seller in this situation, yet all you can see is a victimized buyer. Like I said before there are two sides to every price changes, one benefits and the other loses. These balance to create a kind of equilibreium in the economy.

 

[deathsvengeance]

lesson I learned from this thread:

Rones likes to quote things

 

[Rones]

Gets too confussing for the reader when dealing with posts as long as Lavi's if I don't pick out the parts I'm responding too. Yet this sadly has something of a domino effect forcing my post to be in turn fairly long. I try to stick to the main points of the post to prevent it from becoming a extremely long and splintered discussion, but even my posts could do with being a little shorter.

 

[deathsvengeance]

Gets too confussing for the reader when dealing with posts as long as Lavi's if I don't pick out the parts I'm responding too. Yet this sadly has something of a domino effect forcing my post to be in turn fairly long. I try to stick to the main points of the post to prevent it from becoming a extremely long and splintered discussion, but even my posts could do with being a little shorter.

hehe yeah it does get a little confusing with long-winded posters.

 

[Rorschach]

Just my 2 cents, but i do think its wrong. After reading most of of what people said both sides do make interesting arguments but i think some people confuse the word "wrong" with something else entirely. (what it is idk but w/e)

I went to dictionary.com to look up the word wrong and one of the definitions was " Unacceptable or undesirable according to social convention".
Now i think this is what Lavi origionally ment for it to be. And theres a really easy way to tell if something is "wrong" or not... Put yourself in the other persons shoes.

How would you feel if put in the situation where someone price gauged(sp) something you wanted or worse yet needed? Would you applaud their use of screwing the market to everyone else to make themselves gil? Or would you be like the rest of the community and get pissed that someone raised the price of say materials to make a Hauby or some other high lvl piece of equipment that you need.

Its really easy to say "Well i can do it so therefore i should!" or "If i can make a lil gil screw everyone else!" but that doesnt make it any less "wrong".

People wonder how Erase got so high, or how other scrolls got out of hand, like Sleepga 2 560k? who the fuck started that? Anyway, we look at some servers and are surprised that things like Erase are about a mil and others like Raise 3 are 3+mil. and we go "Wow thats nuts, how did that happen?" Well its thinking like this that gets shit that high.

Is it "right" that they should be that high just because there were greedy dicks that felt like screwing over the rest of the gaming community for their own gain? Or to a greater extent do you think its "good"? Would YOU like to be the one who has to farm for months trying to get a single spell only to find out that theres only one Erase left and after bidding past the last sell price and then some it still wont allow you to buy it?

On another note, meeze said that we would have to burn down 7-11's and wal-marts and what not and how he (the trader in Lavi's stranded people stiuation) is the middle man and whatnot, but the thing is we already have a middleman, its called the AH. It does all our supply and demand needs for us so we can go about our business hunting and gathering. The sinerio(sp) that Lavi is putting before us is that of some 3rd party raising the prices higher to that of what the origional person wanted.

If there werent people warping the supply and demand i'm guessing that the economy would be pretty stable. I'm not an economics student or anything, it just makes sence taht if there was a set amount of a material, the crafters would be the ones regulating the price and not the 3rd parties. And taht would be more dependant on prices of supplies. The only thing is that some of the lower lvl items would be sold for more just to cover the costs.

I'm sorry if some of the stuff i said might not make sence or is logisticly incorrect with what goes on in economics but its late and i'm pretty tired lol. Please let me know where i am off base on things and if i made any sence at all lol^^;.

One last thing though. Wouldnt it be a better server to be if more people cared about their fellow gamers? I would like to be in a server where people didnt put so much emphasis on how much gil was made off of one item and how people can gauge the market to further their own playtime. People do this enough in real life, why bring that stupid mess into a game thats supposed to be a distraction from our everyday lives and not a reflection.