Extreme Market Board Undercutting is a Problem. Who ultimately benefits from this?

[TwistedTea]

Possibilities and profit are not the same thing. Sure, they could have made more gil by just buying the mats and selling the item at a higher price, but the person hasn't lost any gil by farming the mats themselves and selling at an arbitrary desired price.

Not making some theoretical currency you may or may not have made if you had done <x> =/= A loss of currency you currently have invested in some endeavor.

I get where you are coming from but to clarify I'm not referring to selling the finished product at a higher price.

For example if X is selling for 100k consistently,multiple times daily.

I bought the mats from other players for 50k and I sold my item at 100k as well, I'm making a 50k profit.

However, since I didn't spend that time farming/gathering items and instead did this for many items like X but with higher profit margins.

As opposed to someone, who spends hours farming/gathering themselves for a few items like X.

The person who farmed/gathered themselves has lost the time/opportunity to diversify into many/more lucrative markets.

Even though, my profit margins in terms of gil may be lower on individual items but collectively on multiple items, I'm fairly confident that I'd make more gil/hour.