Merchant Archive
Thread: Anti-Trust: Why in-game Monopolies are pure fiction.
How does this stop people from mining power themselves if they don't want to do business with you? For you to have a monopoly on power, you'd have to have the ability to control the harvest of it.
DingoBoi wrote:
I single handedly doubled the price of power on my server. Most other power merchants followed suit and the ones who didn't were bought out by me regularly. Those 'cheap' sellers are no longer in business.
I have the resources and capital to buy out every other power vendor on Eclipse if I choose to.. and to continue to do so for several months which would then transition me from oligopoly to monopoly. Nobody goes back to empty vendors..
DingoBoi wrote:
I single handedly doubled the price of power on my server. Most other power merchants followed suit and the ones who didn't were bought out by me regularly. Those 'cheap' sellers are no longer in business.
I have the resources and capital to buy out every other power vendor on Eclipse if I choose to.. and to continue to do so for several months which would then transition me from oligopoly to monopoly. Nobody goes back to empty vendors..
DirthNader wrote:
How does this stop people from mining power themselves if they don't want to do business with you? For you to have a monopoly on power, you'd have to have the ability to control the harvest of it.
That doesn't.
But that force them to harvest their own power.
The same can be easily done with weapon or armor.
And I doubt everybody will go AS and WS to have their stuff, they'll just stop playing.
Gavvot wrote:
That doesn't.
But that force them to harvest their own power.
The same can be easily done with weapon or armor.
And I doubt everybody will go AS and WS to have their stuff, they'll just stop playing.
Gavvot wrote:
That doesn't.
But that force them to harvest their own power.
The same can be easily done with weapon or armor.
And I doubt everybody will go AS and WS to have their stuff, they'll just stop playing.
Any first day artisan with a survey tool and half an hour of free time can pull up the same power that any "monopolist" can. Any established crafter can raid his couch cushions, pick up some heavy fusions and dump them on a spawn, and likely pull up enough to keep them going for months before it shifts off.
Very, very poor comparison.
DirthNader wrote:
Gavvot wrote:
That doesn't.
But that force them to harvest their own power.
The same can be easily done with weapon or armor.
And I doubt everybody will go AS and WS to have their stuff, they'll just stop playing.Any first day artisan with a survey tool and half an hour of free time can pull up the same power that any "monopolist" can. Any established crafter can raid his couch cushions, pick up some heavy fusions and dump them on a spawn, and likely pull up enough to keep them going for months before it shifts off.
Very, very poor comparison.
Not really.
Anyone can buy and sell armor weapon or anything else.
For the moment no skill at all is required for that.
To do such thing you don't need skill, just money, and it's not something rare in this game.
So, having monopoly on crafted item is indeed much easier.
I single handedly doubled the price of power on my server. Most other power merchants followed suit and the ones who didn't were bought out by me regularly. Those 'cheap' sellers are no longer in business.
I have the resources and capital to buy out every other power vendor on Eclipse if I choose to.. and to continue to do so for several months which would then transition me from oligopoly to monopoly. Nobody goes back to empty vendors..
If you wanna think monopoly cannot exist in SWG fine, big deal.
I don't think that this change is about monopoly stricto senso anyway.
What I do know is that on my server, if there is a good spawn of woolie hide, all the scout resources are monopolised by 1 or 2 crafter max.
Same if good avian meat spawn, nothing is available for a while until the spawn goes.
Simply because some people can afford any price and most don't.
It has nothing to do with starting a business and establishing a shop.
Entering a market and not being able to sell to anyone except one person isn't much different of not being able to buy anything except from one person.
And usually both come in pair.
Gavvot wrote:
What I do know is that on my server, if there is a good spawn of woolie hide, all the scout resources are monopolised by 1 or 2 crafter max.
I seriously doubt that. In fact, I don't believe it at all.
For example, about6 month ago Shadowfire saw a very, very nice spawn of Tatooine wooly hide. Shadowfire had gone almost six months without a good wooly spawn, and prices for anything over 1600 OQ+SR were heading towards 200cpu.
So this new spawn hits, and right off the bat a couple of armorsmiths are paying 120-150cpu for the stuff. To someone outside of the scout / armorsmith community, it would appear that those two guys "monopolised" the spawn. What really happened was that those two guys got their fill within a day or two, and you now had rangers sending tells to just about every armorsmith on the server looking to unload the stuff. I bought 200K at 70-80cpu before I stopped accepting offers.
Bottom line, everyone who was remotely funded got all the hide they wanted. Again, if you weren't on the inside of that what it would have looked like to you was that those two guys with the original high offer were getting everything.
Monopolies can't exist in SWG.
DingoBoi wrote:
I single handedly doubled the price of power on my server. Most other power merchants followed suit and the ones who didn't were bought out by me regularly. Those 'cheap' sellers are no longer in business.
I have the resources and capital to buy out every other power vendor on Eclipse if I choose to.. and to continue to do so for several months which would then transition me from oligopoly to monopoly. Nobody goes back to empty vendors..
Message Edited by BoberFett on 08-13-2004 09:43 AM
Avair wrote:
A coercive monopoly cannot exist without government interferance.
What this means is that unless the government (SWG) gives advantages to certain business (players), that give them an unfair advantage against other businesses, there is no way a single company can control the market.In atruly free market, no single company can drive the price up (hence the word coercive) without making it possible for other competitors to come in and undercut them, driving the price back to the 'market' levels.
While I agree with your overall idea I don't agree with your reason. I do believe a coercive monoply can exists without government interference.
I take Microsoft as an example although they aren't a true monopoly. They could raise their prices to $300 for exp home and people would probably still buy it. They might lose some sales, but I think their profits would remain. It just might give people less reason to upgrade when the new one comes out.
Companies can also have a monopoly if they have the rights to a huge majority of the resources. Whether this be raw goods or actually people. If noone else has the capabilities(even in the short term) they technically have a monopoly.
Both of these situations can't happen in SWG so it doesn't apply here. There are just cases in the real world where these could happen(The diamond monopoly is one example with resources, Debeers I think?).
Resources aren't an issue in SWG. There will always be more coming. Skills to make something is also not a monopoly. Anyone can grind up to master and make the exact same stuff anyone else can. If they have enough drive anyone can go from being nothing to doing 1+ million a day in sales.
The devs are going one step farther than any government has. They are preventing the walmarts, sears, or other huge corporations from forming or making it so difficult for them to function, it becomes a waste of effort. I think this is a bad thing, but that is up to anyone to decide for themselves. I like mom and pop stores, but I will never shop all the time at them just because my cost of living would climb a great deal if I did. Forceing me to pay more for my goods I don't see as a good think in RL or in game.