Jinko touched on something that it somewhat accurate.

Quote Originally Posted by Jinko View Post
Many companies in real life maintain competition whilst still making a profit, video game economics are different in that someone can sell an item for less than its value and not have to worry about the consequences, in fact in FF14 many items produced are actually worth less than the value of the materials to make them, this almost never happens in real life.
The worth of those items is a little more complicated. Usually the item itself hold little value to other people, but for the crafter, it holds great value. More often than not these items are used in levelling up, so a part of the value is to the crafter who makes them, and so they are willing to sell for a loss in order to obtain the experience. This would be something like an investment, or something like research. Where you expend resources at a cost, with the expectation of getting gains in the future.

A research facility might spend millions of dollars developing a new drug. The byproduct of their experiments are not simply the waste materials that they might sell or dispose of, but also the technical skill and information gained as a result of the experiments themselves. Crafters in FFXIV operate under the same asumption, that they take losses for now, in order to make gains in the future. So, I would contest the point that such things do not happen in real life.

Another point about video game economics being different... I'm not entirely sure on this one. Economics is really just humans interacting with one another. Because humans are still the ones operating the video game, the very fundamentals would not change a bit. That's just my hunch though.

Also, when you say:

I just want to sell my item for what its worth.
In a free market, worth and value change. Stable prices usually mean there is a stable demand and stable supply. Especially for FFXIV, there is rarely stable demand or stable supply. So fluctuating prices should not be surprising. And if prices were not able to change when needed, either higher or lower, we would have shortages and wasteful production.