Quote Originally Posted by Kaedan94 View Post
Which is pure, unadulterated greed, and encourages gil buying.

An intelligent business sets prices at reasonable levels. Even monopolies (which is essentially what you are describing) set reasonable prices. DeBeers has a monopoly on diamonds, and they could set prices at "whatever they feel like" (and they do), but they realize (like the intelligent people they are) that if they set them too high, that nobody would buy them because they simply couldn't afford them.

Unfortunately, a lot of greedy crafters don't have that level of intellect. Or they do, and they are actually relying on people buying gil (sometimes because they sell the gil they get to RMT companies).
And additional competition wouldn't mitigate this?