alt Hacker NewsThis reminds me of the game Eve Online.
One of the frequent stories to hit the grapevine was someone putting up a common item at an insane price point in Jita or other popular trading system. And people would buy them (rarely, but consistently).
Something like a piece of an asteroid ore at 50 million ISK.
It's not exactly a crime, but for me it definitely sits in a moral grey area, somewhere between American Health care and selling bottled water in the desert for $1million/bottle.
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I would've assumed it's small scale laundering. What you're saying is it may just be a very cheeky and brazen sales tactic? "Doesn't hurt to try"...
Probably the same people who doordash a $43 big mac at 8pm because "I'm hungry and I don't want to have to get up and drive over there"
A willing buyer and seller engaging in a transaction for a digital luxury good is not as bad as “American healthcare”, but better than killing someone by depriving them of life saving water?
Or is it not as bad as killing someone by depriving them of life saving water, but better than “American healthcare”?
The use of that scale is not making sense to me.
your moral system relies on infantilizing the consumer and removing agency from them
do you think there is not enough transparency or something? a UX problem in the interface that makes you sympathize more? a fundamental and unexplained discomfort with seeking to earn instead of spend?
what exactly would have to change in this relationship for you to not infantilize the consumer and put them on equal moral weighting as the merchant?
That depends. There's a few different trading scams in Eve but it does implement a pretty standard trading book, and so the way that works someone listing a price way above what anyone else is offering is never going to have their order filled. (if you do happen to accidentally offer to buy something at a wildly inflated price, then the person offering it for cheapest gets a windfall).