ajqtrz
Chef - loquacious Old Dog
Seriously? If I go to a store and see that they are charging "gouging" prices I will not go back to that store. I will go to a store who charges average pricing for the items I want to buy. They gain a loyal customer. Frankly, I think you are also forgetting that trades posted do expire after 7 days so that is where some of them go. The ones that don't go away due to expiring are shameful in my opinion! They are either laying in wait for someone to accidentally click going down the rows or laying in wait for a player who is in serious need right that moment, like when someone needs to finish something before nightly decay. Anyway, I really don't want to play MY game with players who gouge other players and that is my choice! FYI, it isn't my valuations. It is Elvenar's valuations.
Adding: This conversation is about trade imbalances that are of no fault of our fellow players. So isn't "gouging" akin to kicking people while they are down?
I agree that gouging is akin to kicking people while they are down. And if the person posting the trade says he/she is gouging then their intent is clear and they can be called gougers. But I've very seldom heard of anybody claiming they were gouging. It's not something of which most would be proud.
And for that reason, to call somebody a gouger (as implied by claiming their trades are gouging) when they post a trade because in your estimation the trade is "gouging" is an exercise in social pressure. Just as your not visiting the stores you don't like puts pressure on them to change their ways, so too, implying a person who is trading at a level you don't like is a gouger, is a moral judgment. People do, more or less, respond to being condemned.
More to the point, perhaps, though, you think your determination of what is gouging and what is not is sufficient to use the label "gouging." Think about a situation in which you are in the dessert. You are very, very thirsty and have no water. I have water. I also have a great need for food. You have bread. If I ask you for ten loaves of bread for a glass of water, is that gouging? It might be, even in my opinion, if I didn't really need the bread and you were in danger of dying from dehydration. It might be if I only really needed one loaf and asked for ten. It might be if I had 500 gallons of water. And it might be if you had 50 loaves of bread most of which you would never eat. But if I have 100 orphans I'm trying to feed, you have 21 loaves of bread and I have 101 glasses of water, it might be a perfect fit. I get to give my orphans food and water, you get food and water and we all make it out of the dessert in one piece. Who is gouging whom, in that case?
The long and short of it is that trades are complex. The value I place on my water is dependent upon a lot of factors and the circumstances in which you would trade 10 loaves of bread for a glass of water can vary widely. In my opinion one should probably just ignore such trades and refrain from harsh judgements about the trader that are implied with declaring the trade is "gouging."
Finally, those people who put up trades that are not taken haven't hurt anybody greatly. They haven't gouged anybody because nobody took their trades. And what they eventually do, is stop putting trades up at that level OR wait until the market conditions change so those trades are taken. It's basic economics and in spite of the attempts to control the markets, in the long run the law of supply/demand goes its way even if we don't like the way it's going.
AJ
[This post was edited and 1/2 removed to try to get to "brevity" ;>) Hope it helps.]
aj