quitthegame

Newsflash! I've taken plenty of English classes, and in none of them have we taken an ignorant post from the intarwebz and analyzed it for grammatical mistakes. Not that that's what I did, there was one grammatical mistake, one instance of you using a word that meant the opposite of what you thought it meant, and one instance of you not understanding causation and time-sequencing in the reaction of markets to future changes. Errors in syntax, diction, and content, you went for the holy trinity and would not be denied. I don't understand your objection, really, isn't it a bit hypocritical for you to remark on me correcting your arguments? Inflation. Apparently inflation violates basic principles of supply and demand? I don't get that one. (Remember, we're talking about only things like logs, ores, essence, fish here, we already put all other items in a category of chronic oversupply) I disagree with you about when autoers began playing, that's how. I didn't "admit" anything about price drops, I made a statement that you then paraphrased badly. Where do you get off, calling that an admission? Seriously, you sounds like a third-rate lawyer. What do I want? I want you to stop responding to my posts, twisting all my arguments into straw men which you then ineptly flail against-- then after I point out that you've twisted everything I've said into a barely recognizable form, protesting that you understand English better than I do. Since you maintain that to be the case, it's hard for me to understand how you could complain about me correcting your arguments or attempting to patronize you, as that would be an absurdity. So yea, I opt for the "there's no point in debating with me" option, you should stop. Better not respond to Qeltar either, might bring old memories of debates with you and threaten the detente.

Three problems, you switched "periodically" and "when", you wrote "periodically" when you should have said "aperiodically", and "speculations/expectations" changes the price before new features are introduced, not after. If the speculations were incorrect, then the correction to reality will be more pronounced due to the market going the wrong way beforehand , but that's another story. The conflict between your authoritative manner of posting, and the fact that your very first substantive sentence contained three major flaws, is quite remarkable. I could almost believe that you write like this intentionally, just to stir things up. Some items from resource gathering skills seem to have generally trended upwards, yews, gold ore, bowstrings. Obviously finished items are in increasing oversupply, as are any nonconsumable items from drops. Runes get cheaper as RC gets new methods and more double-crafters. Most resource gathering skills have been more and more affected by botting over the years, which throws a wrench in any comparison. Do you really think that raw resources wouldn't have steadily gone up in price without the vast numbers of botters? How are rares sponges that soak up gold? Does the gold that you pay for one osmose into the rare itself instead of being transferred to the seller??? How do you differentiate "excess gold" from "gold which is not excess"? What exactly does it mean for the "excess gold" to "[float] around the economy?" Would it be less excessive if the gold were to circumambulate the economy with a rainbow colored parasol, rather than levitating high off the ground in a most undignified fashion? How many times have I told you already, price floors are a lower limit on the price, not an upper limit. Floor. It's below you, not above you. Look up, that's a ceiling. Down, a floor. Up, ceiling. Down, still a floor. All day. Every day. Even Christmas Eve. I swear, you are doing this on purpose.

If we assume market efficiency, so that market value = intrinsic value, then aren't we saying that bubbles are impossible? That's why people that argue under theories of efficient markets always disclaim that there are rare exceptions... because bubbles are historical fact. So since we're currently discussing bubbles, it would be most unwise to use a theory that specifically disclaims that it doesn't apply to them. In experimental markets such as the one in that paper, intrinsic value is a calculation based on future earning potential. Obviously, that isn't useful for phats, but the point is that if a bubble can form absent speculation in a market where the intrinsic value is well-known, then clearly in a market where the intrinsic value is a murky concept based on rarity, a bubble can form similarly, absent speculation. That makes your definition unacceptable. It's a good definition for a certain type of bubble, though it's clearly incomplete, but I'll concede you could conduct a useful discussion of that type of bubbles using it. If you were trying to really understand bubbles though, that definition would be a bit circular, it would presuppose too much. You couldn't objectively discover all the causes of bubbles, if your definition presupposes one specific cause, right? It would at least hinder your effort. I had this in mind and also a general kind of panic, it's interesting to think upon what would happen if no such expensive weapons existed... and what the rares market would look like currently if no such expensive weapons/armor existed. I'm not sure the rare prices would go down after all solely based on panic, on second thought. This brings to mind the common objection against the GE's slow updating, that it would impede liquidity. The question is would artificial limits to liquidity make price crashes more common, or is that not the way the causation goes? Not that I'm really against GE features causing prices to periodically crash, sounds more fun to me :P

That's not what I mean... I'm not saying that a price bubble is a quantum effect, where the probabilities don't resolve until we take a measurement and collapse the waveform-- although I'm not denying that either. I'm approaching it with the idea that it's too complicated for us to fully understand, so I can temporarily grant your statement that something is either a price bubble or not, and still estimate the uncertainty in our specific evaluation, right? I don't see that as getting into a gray area, in that in my mind as soon as we start talking about phenomena so complex that we have yet to fully understand them, we're already in the gray area. Seriously, do you think your evaluation is 100% accurate, even though the market clearly exhibits chaotic behaviors? I thought we were done with the "required". For any specific instance, how could one prove that the an external change was "required", not just a catalyst for a preexisting readiness to crash? Again, you're right back in the gray area of subjective evaluation.

I don't accept that definition. If you refer back to my earlier posts, you see that I reference findings in which bubble-type activity was generated in experimental simulations without the influence of speculative interest. I'll give the citation here: Lei, Vivian, Charles N. Noussair, and Charles R. Plott. 2001. "Nonspeculative Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Lack of Common Knowledge of Rationality Vs. Actual Irrationality." Econometrica 69:831 I'm not aware of what significance the 'probability' of there being a bubble has to this discussion. I'm not trying to estimate the probability, I'm just saying it is nonzero. The way that people talk about rares' future value, makes me 'feel' that the market is prone for a crash-- at least that was true until recently-- but I certainly wouldn't say that it's a 100% chance that it is ... I've repeatedly referenced the fact that RS2 won't last forever, and when Jagex announces that it's ending in say 3 months, there's a very good chance that the value of rares will plummet, but I'd be hard pressed to argue that that would prove that the rares market had been a bubble. There's a lot of room for interpretation, which is why I've always argued against absolutism in this field, although as DF has noted, not in every field. (Which would paradoxically be absolutist, eh?) One last point-- Consider the possibility that the rares market became overheated, their value overshot the intrinsic mathematical value, for a period of time. Then, certain events over the past 2 years held the prices down, even as rares continued to leave the game driving up their scarcity, and the money supply continued to increase over time. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that rares were an a large bubble 2 years ago, but as their price held steady or trended down slightly, that their mathematically inherent value continued to go up to match their market value, ending the bubble peacefully. I'm not saying I think that's the case either, but's it certainly possible.

That's coming dangerously close to ad hominem. I'm not sure what you would argue anyways, I only mentioned it because it was funny that someone was jailed for eating a tulip bulb after mistaking it for an onion. What would you argue? That it wasn't funny? Do you always argue with people's humorous remarks? That must be a hit at parties. In any event, I vaguely remember your remarks about the tulip affair, but I've looked into it more since then and was not impressed by the economic analysis that determined that the pricing was not irrational. Feel free to go into it if you want, I'd be happy to learn more on the subject, although I doubt you'll convince me that my use of the tulip affair didn't achieve my stated objective, an "example of a bubble in something as silly as party hats". I don't care what your motivations are for contradicting yourself Dukey old boy, the point is that when I quote and respond to something you say, and you quote something else that you said (not even directed at me) which contradicts the first thing and deduce from that that I can't read, that's both insulting and dishonest. I really couldn't care less what you point out in every sentence that you write, just don't do that again. If you want my advice though, I would say "yes, you should include 'most likely' in every sentence that requires that qualifier, but only when the other side is merely arguing that something is possible and you are arguing it's 100% not possible". This discussion, right now, happens to be one of those discussions. If you think that there's even a 1% chance that rares are currently in a price-bubble, then you and I have no substantive difference in opinion and are merely arguing over semantics. Again. So yes, including "most likely" when applicable is important, it's probably the reason we keep arguing for pages when I don't think our positions are really very dissimilar. Or the bubble could just reach a point of where it stops growing and becomes quite volatile, until it finally oscillates out of control and crashes. That's what happened in the 1929 crash. Anyway, this discussion is growing pointless, because you've imagined up this thing about bubbles "requiring" an external event to trigger the end. Here's where that word came up first: If it requires an external event to end the "bubble" it is certainly not completely a bubble at the very least. The whole point of a real bubble is that it would end sooner or later without any external events causing it, simply because the excesses would be unmaintable. See, you're the one who originally used the word 'required', and it's not really applicable to what I said. After doing more research, I would change "most" to "many" in my statement, also. (See how I was careful to avoid stating my argument absolutely and you changed it to an absolute wording? This is exactly what I was talking about!) So, no one thinks external events are required to end bubbles, and you don't need to keep arguing the point, against no one. Mm, actually I've heard of a lot of stories where authentication like that goes wrong and renders people's copies of games unplayable. Remember the big to-do about purchasing Bioshock through Steam and the authentication issues a few months back? I'm not sure that was this exact mechanism in that case, but that is the typical issue with measures against cheaters in online games, false positives. If you do the detection simply, you will either make it very easy to get around, or give a lot of false positives, if you do a huge complex system, it slows the game down for everyone(and makes it more expensive). The system with minimal impact on users, small and few false positives and a small amount of slowdown/increased file size, also typically has minimal impact on cheaters, so I don't think that really counts as a good example for you, does it? Here's the thing... the reason why I made the statement using always, is that there are two possibilities. 1. The thing that they implement to hurt miscreants also hurts innocents. This is the scenario that commonly happens. 2. The thing that they implement to hurt miscreants also has unmitigated benefits to innocents. I.e., a change they make to car design makes carjacking harder, but also makes the car safer, cheaper to build even after including the increased cost of design factored into the per unit production, etc. Better in every way. But then, if there's no tradeoff, the car should have been made that way in the first place, the initial design was faulty, and the fact that the change was made with the intent of hurting miscreants is purely due to human error and not from some exception to my principle. Do you see my point? The reason why I could use 'always' is that my statement boils down to a tautology: "If you make a tradeoff between security and convenience, then you always have to lose something and gain something." , via the addition of the implied statement "Assume that a plan which is superior with no negative side effects will always have been chosen when available", which is necessary for a reasonable discussion about the effects of unrelated or arbitrary new initiatives. Hey don't lump us together on this issue, Qeltar hates rares way more than I do. I just think they encourage RWT, as through time they've concentrated wealth in the holders which tempts them to sell gold... and I'm not fundamentally against RWT, although I wouldn't do it in a game that prohibits it. p.s. -- Imagine that tomorrow people wake up and a lot of them decide that rares simply aren't worth much to them, that their lack of utility or aesthetic value makes them worth 200k, not 200m, their rarity notwithstanding. I think in our earlier discussions I felt that this kind of change of opinion would mean that rares had been in a price bubble. I'm not sure I still think that to be true. If many people decided living outside was preferable to living inside, due to some persuasive new religion or something, then real estate prices would certainly go down, but I wouldn't agree that that would imply that the previous real estate prices had been a bubble. So in that respect you have convinced me, I'm just not sure of what. I mean, if rares go down 90% tomorrow, without a relevant update by jagex, we're still going to call that evidence that their price had been in a bubble...I think I'm running into a category error somewhere in the common conception of mass behavior, perhaps I'll figure it out eventually.

I don't agree, I'll look for counterexamples in a bit. edit: I was going to look for counterexamples of 15% per month, but I'm instead going to give this example instead of a bubble in something just as silly as party hats :lol: "The Tulip Bubble There is some record of speculative bubbles dating as far back as the 1300s, but the first that stands out from history took place in Holland from approximately 1620 to 1637. This speculative bubble involved rare, collectible tulips. The tulip, native to the Mediterranean, was first imported to Holland well before 1600. Beautiful tulips gradually became collector's items for wealthy Dutch people. As time progressed, rarer and more valuable classes of tulips emerged. Tulips mutated by botanists and others infected by a virus called "mosaic" (which did not kill the tulip, but instead caused its petals to develop contrasting "flame" patterns) began to sell for incredible prices. Entire homes, horses and carriages were traded for tulip bulbs in some cases. Further enabling the bubble was the innovative climate of Dutch finance. While futures contracts had been in use for several centuries by this time, Dutch speculators invented a new financial instrument similar to what is known today as the option. The low cost and tremendous leverage of this security broadened the speculative frenzy and allowed all members of Dutch society, including farmers, chimney sweeps and maid-servants to give up their jobs and speculate in tulip bulbs. Land and other assets were pledged for credit with which to purchase tulips, bringing leverage into the picture. In 1637 the bubble stretched and burst. Credit had been exhausted; bulb dealers were unable to find buyers for their more expensive bulbs, sparking a selling panic. The plunge in tulip bulb prices left many who had purchased on credit bankrupt. Earlier contracts to purchase (such as futures and options) were defaulted upon, and soon a nationwide depression followed. In the end, rare tulips sold for almost nothing, down over 99% from their peak. " Isn't that in your hometown? Maybe that's why you don't think the party hat bubble is a little amusing , it's in your blood :P :P Aha, one more tulip bubble quote "A wealthy merchant had paid 3,000 florins (280 pounds sterling) for a rare Semper Augustus tulip bulb, and it disappeared from his warehouse. After thoroughly searching his warehouse, he saw a sailor (who had mistaken the tulip bulb for an onion) eating it. The sailor was promptly arrested and spent months in jail." So in one paragraph you say things may or may not be different this time, in another paragraph you say it's impossible for rares to drop back without going up, how is my reading comprehension at issue here? You're the one contradicting yourself, not me. I think it is very disingenuous for you to attack me for an inability to read, when the thing you said that I actually quoted supports my interpretation, and the thing you mention I didn't quote at all! Come on now... Here's an interesting quote about irrationality and bubbles: "Puzzlingly, bubbles occur even in highly predictable experimental markets, where uncertainty is eliminated and market participants should be able to calculate the intrinsic value of the assets simply by examining the expected stream of dividends . Nevertheless, bubbles have been observed repeatedly in experimental markets, even with sophisticated participants such as business students, managers, and professional traders. Experimental bubbles have proven robust to a variety of conditions, including short-selling, margin buying, and insider trading . While it is not clear what causes bubbles, there is evidence to suggest that they are not caused by bounded rationality or assumptions about the irrationality of others, as assumed by greater fool's theory. It has also been shown that bubbles appear even when market participants are well-capable of pricing assets correctly. Further, it has been shown that bubbles appear even when speculation is not possible or when over-confidence is absent ." That's certainly an interesting quote, although it leaves me more confused than before I read it. Ah well. This is simply false. Real bubbles often end with a precipitating event and then snowball from there. Think of raindrops or snowflakes, they are formed from water collecting around a speck of dust. But if the humidity is low, then no raindrops will form. The bubble is the humidity, the precipitating event is the speck of dust. Here's an interesting quote about the 1929 crash in the US: "After an amazing five-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) increase in value fivefold, prices peaked at 381.17 on September 3, 1929. The market then fell sharply for a month, losing 17% of its value on the initial leg down. Prices then recovered more than half of the losses over the next week, only to turn back down immediately afterwards. The decline then accelerated into the so-called "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929. A record number of 12.9 million shares were traded on that day." This bubble seems to have created its own dust speck out of its increasing volatility, at least according to this quote, so this is an example of a bubble that ends on its own. I just mention it because people always refer to prices going back up as proof that it was just a correction, but here prices started to recover and then went back into a fatal downturn. Here's a good example of a crash that required an external event: "The Florida Real Estate Craze Beginning with Florida real estate, the 1920's saw the greatest period of speculation in American history. Sparked by the favorable climate, farmers who wished to enjoy warm winters while their land lay fallow purchased plots of land in Florida. They were soon followed by successful bankers from New York, eager to vacation and flaunt their wealth at the same time. Then, as is true today, real estate could be purchased on mortgage for only about ten percent down, which provided the financial leverage for the boom. Mania rapidly built, with acres of Florida swampland going for up to a thousand dollars (a lot of money at the time) and dirt being trucked in to make swamps into land to meet the demand of speculators. At the peak, one third of the population of Miami consisted of real estate agents which in hindsight should have been a warning of impending disaster. Among wealthy Americans, a contest of extravagance took place, with everyone trying to own the most palatial estate around. The Florida real estate bubble was burst prematurely by a sudden hurricane (hardly unknown to the region) which destroyed many homes and caused tremendous property damage. Soon prices collapsed, and the usual bankruptcies and defaults followed not far behind. Florida was quickly forgotten as speculation went national in the stock market boom of 1926-1929. " And we both know that EugenyG didn't mean it as litterally as the extend you are interpretting it or are you intentionally ignoring that? I already explained this in my last post, the reason I object to his arguments is because he states things extremely absolutely, which means he doesn't have to consider all facets of the issue. If he didn't mean it literally, then I would have presented different but equally valid objections. I.e., if he had merely said that collateral damage is undesirable, but sometimes unavoidable, then he would have had to consider the practical issue of how it could have been avoided while accomplishing the same goals. By saying the ridiculously absolute thing he actually said, he avoids having to consider that problem. See? You see how easily you make claims about "always" as well? Well it is certainly not true that every anti-bad-people measurement has to hurt good people. Give an example then. I couldn't think of one such measure that didn't at least inconvenience the general populace, but if you can, don't keep it to yourself. p.s. all quotes from wikipedia, no need to tell me it's not a scholarly source, I have no plans to present a paper on RuneScape in any academic forum.

The quote actually runs, "I only bet on a sure thing." Apparently you're somewhat of an opposite-minded person. That's cool though, you like to speak in absolutes with such feigned conviction that you feel like you don't need to support or defend your arguments, and that works for you. That's probably why you named yourself after a kind of gun, you shoot from the hip. =D> At least you do it consistently, that's a virtue. Keep on shooting.

Would you bet your life on it? If not, what is the purpose in speaking in such a stentorian fashion? If yes, then Lol.

Hey, you're not allowed to claim credit for saying rares will always go up, and also be more cautious now. That's part of what always means... you're not allowed to change your mind or hedge your prediction without it implying that your earlier prediction was wrong :P That's why I argued against people saying rares would always go up in the first place ... I think when I first started playing RS and debated this with you here, rares were about half what they are now, but I never said they couldn't double or triple in price before crashing, I think I stipulated that they probably would. "Guess what I have been right about that for years as well" If you make a prediction using the word always, you're not right until RS ends, are you? There's a reason why predictions are traditionally made at 3 and 12 months intervals, not unto eternity. Chances are that of Microsoft, Google and Apple, 2 or 3 of them will no longer exist as an autonomous entity in 100 years. That doesn't mean that they are bad investments right now, it just means that very few companies last for hundreds of years. I would be willing to make a very large wager that rares won't go up for 20 years, because I don't think RS2 will last half that long from now. ...I feel like an actuary explaining that nothing lasts forever, how dull. Historically bubbles have lasted for periods of up to 10 years, why do you think RS is different? Why do you claim that merely because they've always recovered before, that this will always happen again? We used to say that because the sun comes up every day, that it always will, but now we know that it only has 4.5 billion years left before it expands to swallow the earth. ;) You are aware that downwards price corrections occur during bubbles, and that happens, but then one time it doesn't happen and there's a final crash? Most bubbles' end is triggered by an actual event that fundamentally changes the market. That doesn't mean that the bubble didn't exist. Although I don't personally think that the current drop in rare prices is even close to being catastrophic enough yet to justify having this discussion ~_~ This is ridiculous. Taken literally, this prohibits any punishment or preventative action, anywhere, ever. There is always uncertainty, there is always collateral damage. There's nothing "ridiculous" about the ideology that good people shouldn't suffer (much) from measurements against bad people. In fact, I strongly agree with EugenyG on that, and it is one of the main reasons why I've always been against the random events, especially when they proved to be ineffective. Duke are you intentionally misreading my argument? I was very careful to be quite definite. Taken literally, Eugeny's arguments implied that absolutely no collateral damage was acceptable, which is ridiculous since there is always collateral damage, so his philosophy becomes a philosophy of inaction. It may seem like a small distinction, but the reason it is crucial to point out is that the reason to draw up unrealistically absolute pronouncements is that they allow you not to look at both sides and weigh the costs and benefits, just come up with some nutty absolute that will obviously be violated, and then feign some fake indignation and your argument is complete. It is ridiculous, and intellectually dishonest, and I won't stand for it. To respond to your point, "the ideology that good people shouldn't suffer (much) from measurements against bad people". I feel that when good individuals are wrongly punished by being mistaken for bad people, that is a great tragedy. When good people in the aggregate are harmed by measures taken against bad people, then I feel like you have to weigh the costs and benefits, if good people will suffer greatly but the benefits outweigh that, how could you not favor the measure? I guess I don't see this as an unnatural thing, because I realize how basic the problem of dealing with miscreants is to society. Mathematically, the most basic problem in a small tribal society is balancing the interest of the individual vs. the interests of the society. This leads to two game theoretic situations, firstly the creation of an autocratic leader to avoid inaction, secondly the ostracism of noncooperative miscreants to avoid selfish behavior modeled after the prisoner's dilemma from game theory.

No, if you misinterpret every one of my posts then it's to be expected that you'd think that. How am I the one that brought up the subject of morality in this thread? Anyway, I challenge you to quote one ad hominem argument I've made. Just one. How am I blindly defending them? I pointed out in my last post that my viewpoint is closer to yours on Qeltar in this discussion, but I end up arguing with you instead because you include nonsensical arguments and phrase things callously. WTF! That's not an argument at all! That's merely a categorization of types of merchants. How can anyone even talk to you, if you can't even understand that?!? An argument leads from a collection of premises, to a conclusion. There's no conclusion in the quote above, it's just an isolated premise. ... :XD: huh? Are you daft? I was very clear, I quoted your response #1, I responded to it, then I quoted your response #2, and then responded to it. Now you are apparently under the belief that my rebuttal to your point #1 should include a representation of your point #2, or I'm committing a logical fallacy. :XD: It's not that I expect an intelligent reply from you at this point, but I must admit I'm surprised that you couldn't even keep that straight. You are wrong. I already told you why. I'm sorry that you aren't smarter but I'm not explaining it again. People come on these forums and explain how they successfully engaged in price manipulation every few months, if your theories disagree with the facts then your theories are wrong. Live with it. Here's a quote from the local science museum on why the sky isn't violet: "Violet light has an even shorter wavelength than blue light: It scatters even more than blue light does. So why isn't the sky violet? Because there is just not enough of it. The sun puts out much more blue light than violet light, so most of the scattered light in the sky is blue. " Another source I read has an additional and more complicated explanation involving the different photoreceptivities of the three different kinds of cones, it's kinda involved look it up yourself :P Perhaps I never said it. Maybe you should look it up, then you could misunderstand it AGAIN! :D

This is ridiculous. Taken literally, this prohibits any punishment or preventative action, anywhere, ever. There is always uncertainty, there is always collateral damage. Putting that aside, none of the changes Jagex has made recently really justifies terms like fallout and collateral damage, do they? The worst off someone can be is that they no longer have fun playing RS, and unsubscribe. No matter what Jagex's motives are, it's their game, if you don't like it don't play it. [Yes I'm aware you already quit, now if you'd only also quit comparing changing an online game to actual warfare with guns and missiles, we'd all be happy] If their only reason were that they just didn't like staking and pking and merchanting, and scammers weren't even involved, your language would still be unjustified. They are under no obligation to provide you with those things. You don't have a RIGHT to an opinion. You have an opinion. Since you don't have a right to an opinion, everyone's right to an opinion cannot be equal. Well, it can be equally zero I guess, but let's move on. I will explain in more detail. Do you have a right to be human? No, because the statement doesn't make sense. A human is human, to additionally say you have a right to be human means nothing at all. Do you have a right to be sentient? Well, since you're reading this, you are sentient, but it just doesn't make sense to call it a right. Rights are actions that people agree should be legally required to allow, but having an opinion is not an action that could be legally forbidden, as it's not something that one can control. "I have the right to be made of matter, and to be above absolute zero." Both conditions that will certainly be true, but not a very useful enumeration of rights, to be sure. Anyway, now that we've settled that, I'll just state that although everyone has an opinion, some opinions are better than other opinions, and some opinions are backed by more force than others. If you disagree, there would be no reason to reply, since if all opinions are equal than discussion is pointless. So, I'll expect you not to waste words replying. This is nutty. They have many more options than we do. They could change millions of things about the game. They could change the terms of the membership agreement. They set the price. This is how and why their opinion is "heavier"-- because it's their game. If you don't think your opinion is superior, why are you asking others to abide by it? Ridiculous. Yea, of this world's many evils, Jagex cracking down on RWT is definitely up there... :boohoo: Let's write the UN, see what they can do. kinda :P

Backwards logic. You called for the changes. I did. Therefore I fail to see how it's "My fault" :lol: Assuming you meant to say "I didn't", his point is that the limits are put in by Jagex to protect the innocent against people like you. The funny thing is that I actually agree with you, not Qeltar, on this point, if I could just get you to quit making logical mistakes and stop phrasing your opinion in such an asshat-ish way we could make a united front in favor of price manipulation. If I could get you to admit that price manipulation is possible. None of which is likely. This boils down to a conflict between naked self-interest, and altruism. The problem I have with Qeltar on this issue is a matter of degree, he thinks the game should be very fair, I think it would be more fun with less constraints on player behavior, more Wild West-ish. The problem I have with you, Sly, is that you act like there's some kind of "bright line", where self-interest up to a certain point is always deserving of approbation, and then there are self-evident limits past which self-interest must be restricted by laws. But there is no such bright line, only degrees. If no line is drawn, then murder is acceptable. If you draw the line at overt physical harm, then death by starvation is fine and dandy, even on an island where one person owns 100% of the farmland and no one else owns any source of food, there's no obligation to feed the hungry. Would you say that they deserve to die, just as you said those scammed of their accounts deserved to lose them? Perhaps they do, but it's rather inhuman to advocate it, all the same.

You are making a category error Sly. Qeltar is arguing that activity A is immoral. You are saying that activity A is natural, and then that activity A is moral, and then you say it's natural again. If natural implied moral, then you would be making a reasoned and supported argument. But it doesn't necessarily do so, so the only sentence above that's directly relevant to Qeltar's point is "People should be allowed to sell at any price they choose." which although relevant, being in fact a straight denial of Qeltar's point, is never supported. Your argument, paraphrased for brevity, is "you are wrong, that is people should try to screw each other, because people naturally screw each other". But Qeltar's argument was "people naturally screw each other, and that is bad for reasons 1,2,3", which makes your reply somewhat of a non sequitur. This is why many people doubt your reading comprehension, nearly every one of your posts is a giant non sequitur. I will illustrate with a chart, in the hopes that you will finally understand this. Qeltar's point: A: people naturally screw each other B: people screwing each other has bad consequences 1, 2, 3. A + B therefore C = people shouldn't screw each other. Sly's 'rebuttal' A: people naturally screw each other D: people should do what they naturally do (This is never stated, so I list it as an implied premise) E: people should try to screw each other. E = not © , so Qeltar is proved wrong. Do you see how illogical that is? The crucial point in the logical structure (D, the only premise unique to your argument) is not only nutty, but you don't even bother to write it down. This is a classical feature of false arguments, hiding the obvious falsehood by never making it definite, just using it as an implied premise. What makes your reply seem like a non sequitur is that in this case, you neglect to do three things. First, you don't address any of Qeltar's arguments, you just proceed to argue as if all of your ideology is necessarily correct, and you can just analyze his position using your ideological notions with no regard to how well your ideology fits the actual situation we're facing (which doesn't come off remarkably well as your ideology doesn't translate to a virtual economy very well), secondly you don't explain or motivate your ideology with the result that the crux of your argument is left in a merely implied premise, and thirdly the elements of your argument that are not only implied work out to be a proper subset of Qeltar's premises, which makes it look like you didn't understand his post at all. There's a problem with your theory here Sly, and it's something we call Reality. Price manipulation, on items that are not discontinued, is not a theory, it's an observed fact. In this forums we've seen someone boast of price manipulating pure essence, and making many hundreds of millions of gp, in the past few weeks. You saying "there's no such thing as price manipulation" is analogous to you claiming that the sky isn't blue. There's no theoretical argument you can make that will convince anyone that a repeated emprical observation is false, that's not how it works. BTW, there's not an infinite supply in RS, just because scarcity is different than it is in real life, doesn't mean scarcity doesn't exist. Time is not infinite, everything in RS takes time, which means any resource is practically finite. Like I've told you before, this is a good thing for you, because without scarcity all of your economics analogies would be a priori absurd, as economics is the study of scarcity. Unluckily for you, although your analogies are not a priori absurd, they always end up being absurd anyway. This paragraph of yours, although not relevant directly to Qeltar's post, is the one paragraph of yours that I agree with. One can exist in RS without trading with others much more easily than one can in the real world. That is one reason why I wish Jagex wasn't so draconian in cracking down on merchanting. The other reason is that while I agree with Qeltar that merchanting is about screwing other people, it still added a certain challenge and dimension to the game. That's part of the point of a fantasy game, isn't it, to do things one can't in real life? This is, I think, why it never seems like you understand the posts you reply to, Sly. Capitalism and socialism are not found in the real world in unmixed form, and the arguments about their twisted RS equivalents are never so black and white either. Capitalism's virtues are also its vices, exploitation, misinformation, political corruption by the wielders of concentrated capital-- heralded as faults by socialists, are also the keys to its success. Competition means some businesses fail, some people lose their jobs, but the failure of the inefficient is exactly where the efficiency of capitalism comes from. Socialism's benefits-- reductions in externalities, ability to plan farther into the future, are minor when compared with the overblown rhetoric used to compare the two, because socialist and capitalist economies in the real world are all mixed.

Solidus, you are correct in that lowering incomes is playing a part, although I don't think it's 100% responsible for the price behavior of rares. But your analysis is a little naive, pking, merchanting, and staking are all zero-sum endeavors, the money that people make in those ventures comes straight from someone else's pockets, which would nullify much of the effects you discuss. It seems to me that pkers and stakers were probably the main purchasers of RWT gold, so one could look at the former situation as a chain, where the gold starts with botting RWTers, who sell to bad pkers/stakers, who lose the money to good pkers/stakers, who then buy rares with their profits. The wealth concentrating effects of staking/pking/merching which you focus on are important, but it is also important to look at where that wealth is coming from.

It can't be that similar to the wild or it will allow RWT. I hope they can come up with something that is fun but still prevents RWT, because if they can't, the new minigame won't be fun. Guaranteed. Just think about it, the wildy would have made RWT quite easy. Now think of a way to change the wildy style single player combat, in a way that leaves the play experience very similar but makes RWT nearly impossible. Inspiration hit you yet? I'll let you know when it hits me. I'm still not convinced that people won't figure out how to RWT using BH, let alone a single player variant. Two things: #1 This doesn't involve calculus. #2 This assumes that the item is instantly available at minimum price. This is a bad assumption, you should assume that the item is available at market price, items have been largely available at minimum price only because of bad price floors and bad initial prices taking a while to sort out, facts that presumably won't be an issue by the time this change happens. This bad assumption pretty much eviscerates your entire point. Not that I understood much of the rest of your post, but it seemed to depend on this assumption somehow. Free trading = RWT is easy, that is dead forever and intentionally. This is a bad idea, leaving RWTers on your friends list is too easy to do. This suggestion would lead to massive amounts of RWT.

Right, that's exactly what I said, price decreases are being caused by an increase in supply not a feature of the GE. It's not accurate to call any price decrease "deflation". These price changes are a result of changes in the supply of certain goods, and are not deflation. Items that weren't in massive oversupply, like barrows sets and yew logs, have actually seen price increases. As you can see, your entire post is rendered moot as the central tenet is flawed. Better luck next time.

They're not allowing unbalanced trades to prevent RWT... I don't understand how they can be more clear about that.

This seems to be the core of your argument, and it doesn't make any sense. Sellers are just as free to put up their items at the high price and go train as buyers are to offer at the low price and go train. The reason prices have been falling, is that people cleared out their banks and put everything in the GE. Case closed.

There are thousands of items. If a trained monkey predicted the price changes of all of the items, then he would get hundreds of them right purely by chance. What is the significance of you getting one arbitrarily chosen item right? What are your statements here based on? Arbitrary Ouija boards? Definitely not actually using the GE, because it's just not true, as Qeltar gave examples for. Ah, now we come to the real reason I'm replying to your post. You only believe that crashes are "real" crashes if they happen for no apparent reason? Ok, name ONE SUCH crash in the real world. Ready, set, go... I think I'll be waiting for awhile. Crashes in the real world don't happen for no reason, they happen for many reasons. Prices get too high, confidence becomes irrational, then a triggering event starts a selloff which punctures the irrational confidence and panic sets in. That's 3 or 4 reasons for virtually every crash ever-- and guess what, they're all apparent. What's a normal level of crisis, btw? :ohnoes: Arbitrarily, I'm going to say that your arbitary definition of his definition as being more arbitrary than yours seems very arbitrary, to me. Still, it's not an abnormal level of arbitrary, so I'll let you off the hook.

I hope he has a better reason than that, because that would be idiotic. If I thought largest = best, then I wouldn't use both words, as that would be redundant.

Good point, why use the largest and best encyclopedia in the world when we can just follow ReapMe's unsupported opinions instead... Exactly when did "largest" suddenly become "the best"? Never, why do you ask?

Good point, why use the largest and best encyclopedia in the world when we can just follow ReapMe's unsupported opinions instead...

I was going to laugh at you for saying that in qeltar's thread, but then I realized that this is your thread, but it lists qeltar as the author. At least it does for me, maybe it's a browser error on my computer. Quite strange... Anyway, just because you made a bunch of threads right after the GE was announced doesn't mean you "own" every idea you put in them. There are no prizes for being merely first, the point of discussion is accurate and insightful analysis. If you say something obvious quickly, no one cares. If you say something amazing first, then you have something. As to your performance in that regard, the obvious things you mentioned came true, and the ideas you mentioned that weren't obvious, like rares collapsing, didn't. Why are you proud of that? To be honest though, I thought items like TT and herbs would collapse, but I didn't expect flax and maples and ores to collapse as much as they have so I'll give you credit for superior understanding of the average RS player's psychology there -- and there are still a couple of weeks left on your prediction about rares, so you could possibly still be proved right. Of course I have been predicting a collapse in the price of rares also, so my major disagreement with you was whether rares are the backbone of the economy, and unless you make that statement in a testable form it will never be settled. You up for that challenge?

I've never seen anything in the general stores after the GE came out that looked any different than before it came out. Bronze bars? Small amounts of bronze-mith armor? Been like that for years. Until I see some actual evidence, then nothing remains to be seen. If you were seeing rune bars and armor in the general store all the time, then I would at least spend some time trying to replicate those findings. The future is always uncertain, but there are millions of incorrect theories out there with zero evidence supporting them, and I don't have time to worry about them. Yea, I just added that in there based on the fact that I couldn't find anything unusual in the general store, and it seems therefore unlikely that this is a huge percentage of the market. I mean, it's unlikely that it even exists, but if it did exist, it would be even more unlikely that it were large. You have an M.A. in economics, and you don't know how to combine two curves that are functions of the same variable? as you'd defined it, y-axis is price, x-axis is quantity- one curve is x= f(y), the other is x = g(y), the new curve is.... wait for it... x = f(y) + g(y) ta dum! And you wonder why math majors have bad opinions of econ majors... bonus points for figuring out why it has to be functions of y for that addition to work in this example P.S. The GS curve that "doesn't move with price"...that's not a horizontal line, that's a vertical line. Good luck "combining the slope" of that vertical line ~_~