On the nature of ebil and marketeering

Cool, then I'm sure you will show me in your next few lines ...

Well that has nothing to do with the number of listings, but I'm sure you'll get to it....
Well what happened to all the items when demand was low, was someone deleting them? But I'm sure you'll get to it ...
Maybe I'm wrong when I think stable doesnt mean increase ... Well now that has nothing to do with your self evident point.... guess I couldn't grasp it.


Why wouldn't you sell anything at the store, I mean you can also carry 10 enhancements?

But a flipper isn't a store, they're the guy wakes up earlier then you and buys up all the corn. Yes

Are you confusing me with someone who thinks that market is evil and people who profit from it and having badwrongfun?

Isn't that manipulating the market? Isn't that what 'rent seeking' profit is?

Stabilising supply and stabilising prices are two different things.

What's being argued here is that the flippers are creating a 'buffer' of stuff that's still available to buy when all the dirt cheap penny bargain stuff has been bought up.

If the price of the flipper's stuff is slightly higher than the floor, then you can either pay the flipper's prices, or place some bids where you want to and wait.

As to the 'morality' of these arguments and the positions taken by the various opposing sides, I'm staying well clear of it. I'm not a 'hardcore marketeer', I stick solely to the shallow end and make and sell generic IO's, so I'm in no position to make any judgements on practices that I don't use.

no.

no.

Oh wait, I get it now.....you're one of those unkempt people who stand on a crate in the park, lecturing strangers on the topic of your bizarre personal cosmology.


Alright, carry on!

I'm sorry if I offended you, I didn't mean to.

Amused, not offended.

Please continue!

Do you have any proof that they don't? I'm suggesting that an economy is working like every single economy we've ever studied or reported on or heard of. You're suggesting that it is magically unique.

And why should I, or anyone else, care how things "seem" to you, in the absence of any kind of evidence or support?

Anyway, do you know the word "stack"? Do you know what it means to speak of a "stack" of items, in an MMO?

If I list the items I acquire while out punching dudes, I will list them in "stacks" of from 1 to 4 items, typically. If, on the other hand, I buy and sell a specific item in quantity, I list them in "stacks" of 10. Which of these keeps more items listed per slot in use? (Hint: Try comparing "1 to 4" with "10".)

Yes. I have 20 characters and I have to search around at some length to find open slots.

Congratulations, you've now conceded the point that these people are increasing supply, but then you say "not that that's a good thing".

But wait! What we all want is lower prices. Prices are formed by the interaction of supply and demand. Supply lowers prices, demand raises them. More supply lowers prices. That is, in fact, a good thing.

Consistency is in and of itself a desirable thing. Why do people buy insurance? Because a slightly higher price that you can be confident of and build plans around is a better deal than a slightly lower price on average that could be wildly higher or lower. When selling, the same thing applies, only you'll accept a lower price in exchange for consistency, usually.

Why not simplify this question to "why do some people prefer not to gamble?", since that's the question you're really asking.

Uh-oh, you're about to commit the fallacy of equivocation.

When people talk about "rent seeking" as "manipulating the market", they mean specifically causing the market to behave in an irrational way from which the manipulator benefits. However, when we talk about actions which affect markets, while they can be called "manipulating" in the broader English sense of "manipulating" a thing as "having some effect on it", they are not "manipulating" in that narrower sense.

Market makers do not in general "manipulate" the market in the sense of controlling outcomes to their benefit; they do, however, take actions which have effects on the market which other participants generally regard as beneficial. For instance, allowing purchasers to buy for lower prices, and sellers to sell for higher prices, than they otherwise would.

Wholesalers are not in business because everyone else is stupid and gullible and being manipulated by them. Wholesalers are in business because they are able to provide an improved marketplace for both buyers and sellers.

Hint, try listing smarter.

Well I don't, does my experience trump yours? Hence why I was asking for some external evidence.

And this is where I stumble, I'm not seeing the flipper produce anything, so I'm not seeing them increase supply. I see that they reduce the number of things that sell for less then the equilibrium, but I'm not seeing where they can help reduce pricing back down to equilibrium, say on double xp weekends. Some of that simply has to do with there only being a last 5 listing.

I'm assuming irrational actors in the economy, hence the Iron selling for a million inf every so often.

From the Wikipedia entry listed above

Rent seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity...

I'm not saying its bad, it is what it is.

Does 7-11 provide any value to it's customers?

They do to me as a customer. They're there with what I want when I want it. Convenience is the value I get in exchange for paying 7-11 prices.

As a consumer I feel compensated. If you don't think I am compensated that's your business-- but not fact.

While flipping may fit your first part you quoted, it fails here. By that, I
mean the manipulation covered by "rent-seeking" isn't in the actual goods
themselves, but rather, from control of a finite supply resource (ie. land
where the goods are produced) or monopoly or regulation.

Clearly, none of those mechanisms prevail in the market -- there are no
limitations on access (ie. regulation controls), there are no limited
resources (as long as players kill mobs, get drops, and sell on market -
supply is infinite), and monopolizing a market for any extended timeframe
is impractically difficult (limited slots, no way to control supply sources).

The second issue is the word "manipulation" itself - how are you defining
this? Or put another way, how is any market transaction fundamentally
different from a simple player trade accomplished through broadcast in say,
Atlas Park, using simple chat, and the simple trade mechanics? Or, are you
calling that manipulation as well?

In answer to your other question (increased listings), it doesn't directly
increase them, but it certainly doesn't decrease them either. However,
from an indirect standpoint, when flippers stabilize a niche nearer it's
"normal" price range, it does make it more reliable and attractive to other
players to list their items on market, rather than vendor them, because in
many cases, the stabilized prices are better than they'd get from the
vendor, so they can get a better deal selling on market.


Regards,
4

That is the smartest way to list -- I have better uses for market slots and salvage inventory than saving up for stacks.

And again, try looking at every single market in the entire world ever. This is not a new question. You are not the first person to wonder about it. We have been studying this for about as long as we've had written language.

Yes, it is.

Ahh, but they don't have to produce things. It is sufficient if they keep things from being destroyed. And since there's a lot of items that you get paid more to vendor than to list, items do get destroyed. A lot.

Steady bidding on items meaning you can sell them instantly makes it more desireable to list them, and less desireable to vendor them, which increases the number of generated items which go on to become part of the market.

And yes, this experiment has been tried, and it works out exactly like that. We've even tried it in this very game. Not as much of an issue post-merger, but in the unmerged markets, it was seriously problematic to try to get some items red side, because there weren't any for sale, so prices fluctuated madly. Add one flipper, and a week or two later there's a steady supply at a reasonable price.

Imagine that there is a flipper listing item X for 100k inf.

What this means is, if you list for over 100k inf, you never sell. If you want to sell... You have to list for under 100k inf. And that means that the next person to come in picks a new number, maybe 90k. And then next one picks another lower number.

It works. It's not fast, but it works that way in this market, same as in every other market ever.

What makes you so sure that's irrational? I just levelled, I have two minutes, I want to put an enhancement in a slot and get back to my TF. A million inf lets me craft something right now. Waiting for a bid to fill does not. Since "a million inf" is a fraction of what I'll get just punching dudes in the next twenty minutes, what do I care? It's too little money to notice.

In general, if you start by assuming that people who have different priorities from you are "irrational", your analysis of any market is doomed to failure.

Grocery stores (and other retailers) add value via transportation and distribution. That's an aspect of the real-world economy that is not present in CoH. BTW, the profit margin for retail grocery is very slim.

As for showing the bid/sell prices, I am in favor of it. I don't think the comparison with WoW is quite accurate though. I think such a system would much more closely resemble the one in EVE Online, and that market system works extremely well IMO.

Congratulations, you've committed yet another logical fallacy!

All together now:

A implies B does not mean that B implies A.

Even though "rent seeking" may imply "extraction of uncompensated value", that does not mean that all "extraction of uncompensated value" is "rent seeking". Furthermore, you have yet to show that there is genuinely uncompensated value involved. I find that, when I have stuff to sell, flippers improve the rates I get for it and how quickly I get those rates, and when I have stuff to buy, flippers increase my assurance that I can get it and tend to stabilize the prices I have to pay.

Some guy who does nothing but buy alchemical silver for 20k and list it for 100k is guaranteeing me that, as long as he's able to keep his stock up, I will never have to pay more than 100k to get alchemical silver. In his absence, I might get it for 30k and I might get it for 200k. On the whole, I'd rather have him around. Similarly, he guarantees that I always get at least 20k if I want to sell mine, without having to wait for bids, while without him, I might get 100k and I might get 1111. Again, I'm happier with him around.

I suspect, though, that conservation of market slots turns out to serve a similar
function.

Yes, but turnover is amazing.

I don't object to it at all. I am in general in favor of more information. I'd like the market to show 24-hour and 1-week highs and lows for items, too.

However, it seems to me that the problem here is not that flippers are somehow making the market inefficient, it's that the market starts out insanely inefficient and flippers make a lot of money narrowing the range a bit.

Stable means that there's more supply when demand is high, and more demand when supply is high. Listings are increased by flippers when they need to be increased.

As for whether people are deleting items, that's exactly the point. If you don't have a reasonable expectation that your items will move fast enough and/or sell for high enough, then you might be discouraged from participating in the market, which hurts everyone. Thus, flippers indirectly increase supply overall.

See above about deletion. Having people sell things at the NPC vendor isn't good for the market -- not for the supposedly downtrodden newbie, not for the savvy marketeer. No one.

I make a conscious effort to sell all my salvage because I want to participate, even if it's by taking a tiny loss on a piece of salvage listed for 1 inf. More often than not, that 1-inf listing turns into a much, much higher sale.

Happily, it's also easier to sell everything on the market. I don't have to make a side trip to the vendor. See how all of this is aimed at the casual gamer?

But I guess you wouldn't care about that, given that you can't see how 57 + 26 + 10 inventory slots > 18 market slots.

They're the guys who ensure that there is sufficient incentive for people to open stores, if we're going to keep the analogy.

Clearly not.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Look, it's very simple. If we accept your premise that flippers increase prices towards and even beyond the equilibrium point (which is true as far as it goes), then we must also accept that flippers make selling stuff more attractive. If selling stuff's more attractive, then more people will be inclined to sell stuff.

If more people sell stuff, then supply is increased. The more participation there is, both from buyers and sellers, the harder it is for flippers to artificially inflate prices (and make a profit doing so). That's your equilibrium.

(And double-XP weekend is a terrible example if you're looking for lower prices. Demand spikes during double-XP weekend. Flipping can blunt some of the effect of that spike in demand, but it can't counter it entirely. There are just way more buyers than sellers of any kind in that scenario.)

When we're talking about play money, and particularly so little of it, it's hard to argue that any act is irrational. If someone doesn't have a whole lot of time to play and they want to craft something before they log off for the day (or even the week), then it might not be a big deal to overpay like that for a piece of salvage.

If you'd said 100 million instead of one million, we might be closer to irrationality, but even then it's a hard case to make. In any case, as before, the phenomenon you're describing would be helped, not hurt, by more flippers.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

flippers add value by ensuring what you want is there when you want it- temporal value, if you will. If you *want* to tie up a slot and wait a while to get a 'deal', that option is there. If your slots and time are worth more to you than a negligible inf savings, the flipper is there to ensure you can get your widget NAO at market rates.

In a game environment where time is the only 'currency' with real value, that's an important service.

what would you say to an entire SG dedicated to setting the world's supply of inf on fire?


=D

It can't, since the flippers use the same channels of distribution as the primary buyers and sellers.

Isn't this what I said on page one? Couldn't y'all have just said "I agree with Intrinsic" and made this thread five pages shorter?

That's warehousing, not T&D. Warehousing is a value-added prospect to the buyer only if it is a necessary service. Is warehousing necessary in CoH? That's an argument with no way to win.

If you're saying that there's no 100% analog in CoH for RL distributors, then you're right.

But if you're saying that the ability to move items faster isn't a benefit to the market overall, then that's crazy talk. I can fill up my salvage and recipe inventory in about three missions. At that point, I have three choices:

1. I can do what Chuckles apparently advocates, and spend the next hour or so messing around with transferring items among my countless alts and/or messing around with my SG's storage (and, interestingly, Chuckles demonstrated a desire for more base storage in the Base forum about a year ago).
2. I can say screw it and vendor (destroy) my stock.
3. I can list it all on the market, and hope it turns around quickly.

All of the above assumes, of course, that I'm interested in keeping space available for any potential high-value drops. I think it's pretty clear that's what the game encourages.

You said flipping was a parasitic activity, which may be true on an individual basis; no one can know what it's in your heart. But on a grander scale, flipping helps the market. It is neither a good nor a bad act, intrinsically.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build