Originally Posted by
kikix12
You say that "they're farming the mats themselves" and then that "they don't understand that farmed items were not free"...This is illogical.
Farming materials themselves does, indeed, make materials free. You don't spend any gil on that. You can then proceed to sell those materials and turn your "time investment" into money directly, or you can use them to craft something and then sell that.
In real life, large companies do indeed start producing their own stuff for sale. Look at any large shop brand. They have their own brands, because every step between harvesting resources and selling the finished product that you do yourself (on a large scale), the lower the costs. And the lower the costs, the more you can undercut competition that buys equivalent products for sale from others, thus being more attractive to the consumers without actually losing the profit margin. In a game it's just so extreme since there is literally no cost associated with your own gathering-resources and crafting portions at all (other than your time, of course).