Sarah said:
As for selling the stuff faster, the union will be a place to share information and in an easy way create communication between the buyer and seller. Miners tend to sell their ore to resellers to get payed fast, in the union you will be able to find crafters buying directly.
Crafters will buy if they dont have it in stock or if they don't have much. They wont buy anymore if they already have a storage full of that. I don't know for sure , but I think that miners mine faster and hunters hunt faster than crafters use the materials. Traders are very usefull in gathering that material when the market is flooded and nobody's buying it (so that miners/hunters dont have to tt it if they need money) and then having it for sale in huge amounts when somebody needs them.
Sarah said:
I agree with you, the crafters are in a hurry, buying at stupid prices because they can't find a seller. Miners are lazy. Resellers are greedy.
Resellers are not greedy. OK, some of them are, some of them are even very stupid and dishonest, but that's just like in any profession in PE or IRL for that matter , so dont generalize pls. What happends is that not everybody like you can (or is willing) to deposit large (or even small) amounts of money
into this game , so they need some way to make money. Let's face it, hunting or mining for a living in PE and having profit in it it's pretty hard for most ppl. So you have to remember it's a free game an ppl are not suposed to deposit , so it's only natural that each tries to find a way to make money in the game (expecting they don't do anything dishonest or cheat anybody).
Sarah said:
Why pay the middle man if he's expendable?
Maybe because the midldle man provides a usefull service for many ppl and that same service requires many hours of work and patience from him? Expendable...? Not so sure about that. That Union may work for a certaint limited group , but in the big picture I find it extremelly hard for PE to work without traders.
Sarah said:
I don't care if there are resellers in the PE universe. I just want to give the people an option of buying and selling ore directly from miners to crafters. This will create a better economy for the union members. And I am sure, if crafters hear about the union they -will- join, and the more people join, the more efficient it will be.
In some cases it sounds you want a bit more than that. Sounds like you really care about the resellers. You made it very clear that if it depended on you they would never make any deals (or money), that you find that unfair.
Even more, what you suggest involves great power and responsability. If things go as expected , that union would have tremendous power over the market flow and pricing. It would be a matter of time untill anybody from that union toke advantage of that power (ppl in general are greedy, not only resellers
). Traders, miners, crafters and hunters (ALL of those , not just traders) are responsible for deciding what the market price for a certaint material is, everyody knows that. If a traders asks too much the miner/hunter doesn't sell, it's that simple. That part of the economy regulates itself. I don't know that much about economical principles and dont know if I'm making a huge mistake here, but Adam Smith "Invisible Hand" theory comes to mind
The only diference is: right now it's miners, crafters, hunters and traders globally that decide what a material is worth, what you want is for a small union lead by a couple of ppl to decide that amoungst themselves and create your very own private market. That is dangerously close to be classified as the kind of market manipulation that you acuse traders of. Even worse considering that you plan the severely limit the entrance to that market and what kind of information and/or priveliges are available to all the non-union ppl.
So from were I see it (many ppl will disagree with me of course, and I still would like to hear their arguments
) what you are trying to do is exactly the bad things that you acuse the traders of doing: market manipulation and deciding prices, pushing them up or down at their will, and doing that in your own benefit. Even assuming that you wouldn't take a wrong advantage from your position, you would still be lowering the prices on materials preventing from miners to make more money from it (pls note that ALL miners/hunters can and should sell their materials at the same prices that traders do), but I guess that that would interest you since from what I know you would like to see those materials cheaper right?
Sorry for the long post (I have a tendancy for that). Let the flaming begin
