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 Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 5:41 am
This is the way I see it. Let's say there's an item and its average price is 20k. You see one for 19.6k, and buy it hoping to make a 400g profit. But when you sell it for 20k, it takes that 400g out of it, so no profit is made. Naturally, we'll raise the price to try to make a profit, and it either won't sell, or the average price will rise, which is the exact opposite of what the mods wanted to happen with this. Moreover, people will stop using the MP to sell their items. There'll be too many buyers, not enough sellers; demand exceeds supply, and the price inflates even more.
Basically, the only way you can make a profit on MP anymore is if you get the item you're selling for free, or at most really cheap.
I swear, if Gaia keeps up at this rate, all the smart people are just going to leave, and Gaia will be the stupid shithole of the internet.
On another note, I completely despise this flood control. I'll just do this while I wait. *air guitar*
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:17 am
Quote: The Big Picture (Macroeconomic effects)The new marketplace has more information available to all users. More information is better. The new marketplace allows you to sell more items at a time. More trade is a good thing. But, More trade through the marketplace lowers the number of items sold back to the stores. Selling items back to the store is the only way gold leaves the economy (yes, it sounds weird - selling an item back to the store and getting gold actually gets gold out of the system, but when you look at the economy as a whole, this is how it works). So in order to keep "inflation" at the same rate it was before, we have to remove some gold out of the system. A 2% listing fee does exactly that - it's supposed to take out the same amount of gold that the new marketplace design will prevent from flowing out of the system. And it hits the source of the problem - if the marketplace is changing the flow of gold out of the economy, the marketplace is the right place to correct it. The following post will explain why more information is good, and list some other functions of the fee. After that, we will use the rest of the thread to answer specific concerns the community has raised. Quote: More Information is Better!In the old marketplace design, critical pieces of information were missing. As a buyer, you were able to see what sellers are currently selling their items for, but you did not know what other buyers were actually paying for it. As a seller, you saw other listings, but again, you did not know if items were still in the vend because they were overpriced, or because it's a slow time of day, slow day of the week, etc. So both sellers and buyers benefit from more information in the marketplace, since both buyers and seller will now be able to see what other users are paying for an item. As a buyer, you don't want to pay to much, and as a seller, you don't want to be paid too little. As for community members making a living buying and selling items in the marketplace - they now have better knowledge of what's going on, and can now sell more items at a time. Another more subtle point is that with more transparency in the marketplace, there will be more buyers and more sellers around, and more opportunities for "professional vendors" to trade. A listing fee will eat some of that increased potential profit, but as a whole, "professional vendors" are not really worse off. Two more point before we turn to answering specific concerns and reservations that were expressed in the SF forum: 1. The listing fee will prevent price manipulation, maintaining the integrity of the added information. 2. Better information for the Gaia community will also assist in our continuing battle against bots. Quote: The idea that prices will rise by 2% (or even more) has one flaw: if sellers can raise their prices by 2%, they can do it today, and do not need the listing fee as a justification. Furthermore, let’s entertain the idea that sellers in the marketplace only want to get a certain price for their items, and this is the reasons prices now are lower than what they could be. The 2% fee will "force" them into raising prices by a bit more than 2%, just to stay where they were. Even then, any industrious marketplace participant can today buy the item for the price that satisfies current sellers, and still sell it for 2% more. If it could happen, it would have already happened before the fee was introduced . So will buyers bear the full implications of the listing fee? No. If that were true, all sellers now would get 2% less for their items. For 2% less, not all sellers will be willing to sell their items. With fewer items up for sale, the price will increase a little. It will not increase by 2%, and the previous paragraphs explained why. So actually, sellers and buyers will be sharing the costs of the listing fee. A more technical explanations: draw a supply curve and a demand curve. Their intersection is the market price. Now draw a new supply curve, adjusted with tax. The new intersection between demand and supply, which is the new market price, did not change by the full 2%. This is because demand is not perfectly inelastic, and neither is supply. Source- Sagger-AT3 (Ph.D. in Economics and interning at the Gaia HQ) In other words, the 2% tax will cause disinflation (i.e. Inflation will continue, but at a slower rate than before.).
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 7:28 am
I'm not happy about it either. If they wanted to stop inflation, they should stop the daily chance and add a couple of goldsinks.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 9:36 am
But since adding the fee, my quest price has gone up. It's so stupid, seriously. I'm with Atrixa on this one.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 9:50 am
*sighs* Three months ago, the price of a Chyaku Norisu Scarf was at approx. 60,000g with prices rising about 1.75% each week (no more than a few hundred gold). Approximately one month ago, the scarf's prices underwent a period of hyperinflation, completely independent of the new marketplace. This brought the price up to around 80,000 gold. The same happened again within the past week.
To attribute this to the new marketplace is both a careless oversight and a gross generalization. Over the past two months, Gaia's economy has experienced a number of anomalies due to greatly fluctuating purchases of monthly collectibles. During months where the purchases were high, the overall prices of past MCs (within the past 1.5 to 2 years) were either lowered on average or kept at a constant level. With fewer MCs bought in recent months, the marketplace has experienced massive amounts of hyperinflation and disinflation, but no deflation.*
In short, your argument fails to prove that the tax is superfluous. (No offence, but it is a false analogy. You're trying to attribute current trends to a completely unrelated external variable.)
*-I make no claims as to the validity of this statement. It is based entirely off of personal observances and scrutiny of the marketplace and price listings.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 10:19 am
There's still better ways of targeting inflation though. We don't NEED the stupid tax.
I love how they call it a 'listing fee'. If it was a listing fee, It would be a fixed amount that you would have to pay before putting something on the market. Since they are taking a percentage of our earnings, it is a tax.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 11:16 am
No, we don't need it. So what? Those selling items will just sell them for a slightly increased price. No big deal there. The tax will also take some gold out of the Gaian economy, thus helping to curb inflation.
The Oculus Magica that you're questing for? With the tax, the price will rise to around 32,000 gold (This statement is based on the assumption that the tax is implemented at the time this post was written.).* However, it will level off the prices. Currently, it (the price of the Oculus magica) is rising by an average of one percentage point daily, around 200 gold. With the disinflation brought about by the tax, the price will likely lower to a disinflated rate of increase of between 0.5 and 0.75 percentage points daily (100-150 gold).
In approx. ten days, the Oculus Magica would be worth 32,000 gold anyways. this leaves us with a deficit of 2,500 gold. As the rate of inflation has been approx. halved, it will take twenty-five days to reach ground-zero where the deficit is completely eliminated. After that point, the consumer saves an average of 100 gold per day that would have otherwise been used to purchase the Oculus Magica.
So, as far as the short-term inflation is concerned, the tax is certainly a negative. However, once we reach ground-zero, the consumer begins to save money in the long-run.
Anyone care to disagree? I'm sure that none of you would like to argue for throwing away your gold. Of course, this does ignore the strain on the producer, or seller. Admittedly, this is a thorn for the producer as he will have to now wait nearly, if not twice as long as he would have otherwise to sell his item at a specified inflated price. And to this, I must remind you that though one might not be able to take such advantage of inflation as without the tax, however, the average user will generally purchase more than is sold, thus outweighing the disadvantage that the producer is at.
*-This statement is the absolute maximum increase of price that will be seen for this item in response to the taxation. In actuality, the average price is not likely to rise by more than 1,000 gold upon the release of the tax.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 2:57 pm
No, see, one month and the Chyaku Norisu Scarf's price went up 20k. One day after the tax was added, it went up 10k. That's a rather exponential increase. I'm sure many other items are experiencing similar issues, but I'm too lazy to go through Tektek for them. But really, it's a pointless tax, and there are other ways of controlling inflation. Besides, inflation IS a natural part of the economic cycle, and the prices all go down eventually. And inflation's never been a huge problem before. If you know what you're doing, you can get a 1 million gold item somewhat quickly. You can post for gold, plus the buy low-sell high thing, and start a quest thread. It won't help control inflation, as I've already explained.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:42 pm
Yes, this has been happening with the Oculus Magica, Elegant Veil, Ancient Katana, Cloud, Mythrill Halo, and a number of others. This hyperinflation has, by-and-large, occurred before the introduction of the taxation. It's the law of Supply and Demand and overall the tax has had precious little effect on the prices of items in the marketplace. Quote: No, see, one month and the Chyaku Norisu Scarf's price went up 20k. One day after the tax was added, it went up 10k. Wrong, however I too must revise my original statement. Three months ago, the scarf was stable around 65,000 gold. The price then, over the period of 1.5 months, inflated to around 85,000 gold. From there, it has steadily been increasing, and, if you will note, the price only elevated by 4,750 gold on the day that the taxation was announced. This is about twice as much as required to compensate for the 2% tax. If you include the natural inflation, the inflation due to the tax is reduced to 2,700 gold--only 800 gold more than required to compensate for the tax. Don't believe me? Here's proof:  Quote: It won't help control inflation, as I've already explained. No, I do not believe that you have. As I have pointedly explained, the tax will lead to disinflation, that is to say, it will curb the current inflation trends. Unfortunately, I have yet to see you make a comprehensive rebuttal detailing exactly how my explanation is flawed. However, if you would like to argue other alternatives rather than simply pointing a finger at me and shouting 'Nu-uh, you're wrong!', I would be more than happy to continue this debate. I do not mean to come off sounding stand-offish or to offend you in any way, however, I would very much appreciate a full-fledged rebuttal for all of the work that I have put into this.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:45 pm
20k in one month is still a lot less than gaining 4k in one day. All I noted was that before the tax, the price was in the 90k range, and after it was in the 100k range. At a constant rate of 4k per day, it's around a ~120k per month increase. Thankfully, it's not constant. But there are still other ways to control inflation, such as if we institute a real bank of sorts, letting us have savings, and taking away from our profit isn't going to help much at all, at least not for the individual. Inflation's never been a huge problem before, at least not for me, and I don't see why it is now. There's no reason to try to control a natural cycle of the economy. As Atrixa said, if it was a 'fee,' it would be a fixed amount taken before we list the item, not a percentage taken from our earnings. Lost profit may not seem like much for most items, but it all will add up after a while. With the fee, there will be less buyers because not many would be willing to pay the tax, so demand will exceed supply, so that won't help inflation much, either. Also, in your Tektek example, the 8/25 price is higher than the 8/19 one,so the price IS going up. There are an equal amount of red and green arrows, but the price has gone up more than it's gone down. EDIT: And the price may go down, but the amount it costs is proportional to the amount of gold in the Gaia economy, so it would still be almost the exact same struggle to get it, only hindered by Gaia detracting from our profit.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 8:13 pm
Ah! Too much thinking... crying I need a break for the night before mah brain 'splodes on me.
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Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:56 am
I have to agree with you that inflation was occuring before any mention of the tax. Though I don't pay much attention to the market, I could see it when I was questing for a cloud a few weeks ago. It was increasing at a rate I had never experienced with a quest item before.
I stand by my original opinion of the tax though. There are better actions to take. (I don't suppose people, especially newbs would appreciate the loss of the daily chance, though older members can just see it spits out worthless crap.)
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Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 7:29 am
Scraps of Former Sanity 20k in one month is still a lot less than gaining 4k in one day. All I noted was that before the tax, the price was in the 90k range, and after it was in the 100k range. At a constant rate of 4k per day, it's around a ~120k per month increase. Thankfully, it's not constant. But there are still other ways to control inflation, such as if we institute a real bank of sorts, letting us have savings, and taking away from our profit isn't going to help much at all, at least not for the individual. Ah... Now an actual bank... That could really work out to be a great idea, if implemented properly. Loan services could prove problematic though... Of course, it would satisfy all of those people petitioning to get their user-run loan services back. And if made with a loan cap, it could actually work out. That is to say, that one could only withdraw* a maximum of x and could not make any more withdrawals until the original has been paid off, with, say, 2% interest... I might just make a petition for this--it's genius. ^_^ *cough is lazy cough* Ooh! Even better! I'll PM Sagger-AT3 about it since he's technically a developer... Ooh, if we present this correctly and the tax doesn't go over so well... Hehe... This is making me giggle insanely. *-'Withdraw' in the sense of taking out a loan. Storing gold and gaining interest on it would remain completely independent of the loan service.
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Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 8:05 am
Hmm. I think a bank idea could work...
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Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 7:04 am
You've come so far from innocence, provided all the consequence...
I think there is a petition for a real bank somewhere. Another way to control inflation would be to make more desirable, expensive store items. The only really expensive store items I know of is the fancy satin set at H & R Wesley. If more items like that are added, more money will leave the economy without having to take taxes from our hard-earned profit.
...only what does it matter now?
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