I get so tired of the whole, “we are providing a service” and “there are traders just like in real life,” especially when comparing it to commodities like tomotoes and other groceries.
Yes, people trade in tomatoes. They buy them wholesale from the growers, mark them up, and then sell them for a small profit to retailers or to end users (grocery customers). In this sense, they offer a service: the average person does not want to make a trip out to farm country to buy a few tomatoes for dinner. However, this service is not required in PE. There is a “farmer’s market,” known as the auction. There is no need for a “middle man,” so please stop couching this in noble terms of “providing a service.”
What people are talking about here is going into that grocery store and buying up every tomato in the place for $0.50/kg and then setting up a stand right outside the store, selling tomatoes at $0.65/kg. That’s not a service.
These people are not traders and they are not “resellers.” They’re speculators: they buy a commodity in the hopes that it will rise in value. And I don’t think anyone has a real problem with that (though, some might). In real life there are speculators in commodities, art, wine, comic books, and gaming cards. What people are talking about in here is these people using friends and alts to manipulate the price because it isn’t going up fast enough for them–creating a false market. Price-manipulation is unscrupulous at best, and in the real pioneer days (which PE emulates in certain ways), such people would have been run out of town on a rail. Is it illegal? That all depends on how much of your profits get donated to polititians. Does it create ill-will? You bet. And I think many people, myself included, would like to do whatever they can to expose these people and their methods so that others know not to bid on their items.
Yes, there are traders, resellers, speculators, and scammers in real life. There are also consumer advocates in real life.
