Architect Archive
Thread: People who are jacking up our economy...
I know for a fact that I effect the local economy, but I do not do so in an illegal way. I also know for a fact that Wal mart affects the local economy in our neighborhood, and it too is not in an illegal way. In fact I know that the Winery work for that has the same vertical monopoly that Rath talks about affects the market world wide, especially in prices, but not in an illegal way.
Another poster here claims that whatever something is going for on the open market is what prices HAVE to be based upon... dead wrong, Else Wal Mart could not have done what it did. It sold things for less than what the market was selling it for.
I could even make the case the other way, I saw a guy on this forum selling resources for 2 cr per unit, Well my final price is higher than that! Are you saying I cant buy his stuff, sell at 3 cr per unit? Is this America ( or Naboo or wherever ) or the USSR ( which doesn’t happen to exist anymore )
I know what I am doing is competitive business, I don’t apologize for that. I do object to people falsely claiming that I am doing something that is wrong, I am not, not morally nor in the USA legally, nor in SWG against any intended rules.
I'd like to make 3 things absolutely clear and then I'm going to head out for Black Bush therapy:
1. Anyone can sell their goods for any price they please.
2. Selling goods below their value on a consistent basis is inherently bad business and has a broad ranging impact on the economy as a whole.
3. Misunderstood real world economic factors applied to a non real world economy are all well and good, but insisting that they comprise a valid argument supporting bad business practices will result in threads like this where impressionable folks can be easily misled by arguments couched in rhetoric and disingenuity.
4. I said 3 things, there is no 4.
Tued the Master Builder
Fine dude. enough said there is no point to even dicussing this any more.
I just have one more thing to add to this.
Senerio:
2 Merchants
1 Customer.
Merchant one has been in business for 4 years selling 1 type of item and it has been doing pretty well. Well enough to attract the attention of Merchant 2.
Merchant 2 sets up shop just up the street from merchant 1 and offers the customer a 50% discount for the exact same item that merchant 1 is selling.
Of course custer turns left down the street instead of right and goes to merchant 2.
Merchant 1 on the way home notices that Merchant 2 has moved in and is selling his item for 50% less.(pulls out a rag places it in gas tank of car then wedges stick to gas peddle. Lights rag and releases car into merchants 2's store. Jk)
Merchant 1 goes to work the next day and drops the price of his item to 15% above cost. There for being 20% lower then merchant 2. Disapointed that his sales have droped when every thing was going well he still feel confident that customer 1 will come back.
Well Merchant 2 is driving home the next day and sees that merchant 1 drop his price 20% below his! The next day he drops his price yet again. This time its only 5% above cost.
Soon merchant 1 and 2 have no differance in cost and are hiring hot dog to draw in business.
Pretty soon customer realizes that there is no point in going to merchant 2's store because its not on the way to work. And not being able to do any thing to drive the customer back to the store merchant 2 goes out of business....
Merchant 1 sends a thank you card to merchant 2 and increases his price by 10%.
Oh, you mean us folks who undercut you not because we are more efficient, but because our friends and PA help us?
Perhaps we know where our loyalties are better devoted. I, for one, chose the population at large over other architects.
I am certainly not doing it just to screw with the economy, what is the point in that? I am doing it to make a name for my character as a low cost dealer because I see a sharp market decline on the horizon.
I still disagree that what I do ( and just about every other architect in SWG ) would be illegal, any more than it is for Standard Oil, or Weyerhaeuser ( paper division, not wood, the paper division owns it from tree to final sales ) or just about any winery.
I have such a small market share that is not likely to grow, No small operation would be found guilty with such a lawsuit, I don’t think that case could be made.
But it is interesting to try and put real world law as it would apply to this artificial environment. Lets talk about murder next,or zoning laws
Dayln wrote:I am certainly not doing it just to screw with the economy, what is the point in that? I am doing it to make a name for my character as a low cost dealer because I see a sharp market decline on the horizon
I also see that same sharp decline on the horizon. My take though, is by lowering MY prices now, to a bit below the norm does not prolong that sharp market decline. The decline is going to happen, regardless of how low I price. Sure, I'll see more business pricing low, but that doesn't neccesarily mean more profit. By making MORE business at less profit, I'm taking business away from another architect.
If anything, low pricing means people are buying deeds faster, which is making the sharp decline happen faster.
We know the facts. For every 100 players in game, there's a limited call for deeds. When that need is met for 80% of the player base, there is going to be VERY little business out there for us.
To keep selling regularly in the future, you're going to need to drop your prices to see brisk business. And as time goes on, drop them some more. Soon, you'll hit the point where the prices are so low that it's not worth doing anymore. A lot of archs will quit, and prices may recover a bit, but not much, because the demand will be gone.
By maintaining prices are long as possible, and fighting the deflation of the value, you PROLONG the length of time in which Architecture is financially viable.
I made a choice a long time ago to be an Architect that people could come to when they wanted one or several deeds, and could rely on me to have them ready very quickly. I didn't like the way that a lot of archs were running long waiting lists for their customers, and I saw it as bad service. When a Weaponsmith wanted 10 heavy minerals, I had them ready for him the next day.
I see the dwindling market like a large pie. There are architects that scramble & sell low in order to gobble up as much of the pie as they can before it's all gone, and there's those of us that take our piece, enjoy it, and leave business for the other architects.
You see it as a PvP war, I see it as a brotherhood of professionals.
Look, it's simple. Because of the lack of decay of our products, the Architecture market is (or will be soon) saturated, and then we will all be out of business. I have already begun moving away from Architecture as a moneymaking venture, it's really more of a hobby for me now. Architecture is really dead-end economically, even for the people who are still able to find customers for the time being. Server population "churn" just is not enough to sustain more than a couple of master architects per server. City Designer *might* change this, but if there is still no decay on buildings, this will only be temporary.
Dayln wrote:
I agree with #1 and #3, but quite a number of billionaires disagree with you on #2
How do you become a billionaire by constantly selling for less than what the widget is worth?
Anyway I would say the reason your wine example is a little different than my point is this. I would be willing to bet a considerable chunk of change that your vineyard sells it's wine for more than the grapes would sell for. By the time the completed bottle is done, all costs are taken into account, and final sale price is determined, I would say they make a profit. Now lets say that your vineyard could sell its grapes for $1 a lb, but it only costs them 50 cents a lb to grow. Now I don't know much about making wine, but let's say theoritically it takes 3 lbs of grapes to make a bottle of wine. So we'll say there is 3 dollars worth of grapes per bottle, but only $1.50 invested in the bottle of wine. I seriously doubt they sell the wine for only $2.00. Hey they're making 50 cents profit right? Now of course this isn't taking into account all the varied other costs such as labor and what not, but for our comparitive purposes it will do.
I don't agree with you Rath, but I very much admire your civility.
I think part of the problem might be due to differences in server economics. On Lowca, the price of resources is about 2.5-3 credits, and that's for fairly decent stuff.
I know first hand (starting on stim making now) that placing harvesters on good quality resources is a lot of work and takes a lot of time, both in terms of locating the best resources and maintaining the harvesters. Once placed, large amounts of time are spent traveling to maintain the harvesters, often between planets. So you need to add their time and ticket costs to their overall costs.
In contrast, my architect has been able to find resources that will work good enough within a thousand meters or so ofmy house.Have I been lucky? I dunno. I purposely don't get the best resources or the best concentrations, but instead strike a balance with traveling to maintain them. I can harvest them, and sell them in vast quantities via architectural items, unlike the bazaar sellers who are capped at 3k.
With adequate resources on hand,my time is negligible for making medium items. So I sell them for about 2.5 times the number of resources, roughly equivalent to market value for the raw resource, but at far greater quantities than bazaar sellers can manage (it is their prices I'm using as a benchmark).
My time is not negligible for large items. It is not any fun to make them, so I simply refuse. People can't pay me enough to do it. I play this game for fun, and refuse to do things that aren't fun whenever I can. Last night, someone asked me if I make PA halls. I said No. I felt somewhat guilty, even though my answer was literally correct. I don't make them. He didn't ask me if I could make them. 
So how far apart are we, really?
How so, if we have the sense to avoid them?
And what are you upset about if we do - moresales for you.