Morality, legality, and Concord lethality

Can flippers, it can happen to you!

Morality, a fuzzy topic in life, EVE Online, and apparently at tourist center sanctioned Munich laundry center (aka Wash Center). A great lesson on morality can be learned from a shady looking kid all too happy to collect your dollars from you and palm a few euros as he hands the “change” over with a smile. If the situation is right and the motivation strong enough, morality takes a back seat. Taking advantage of people is profitable, and due to ignorance or sheer laziness on behalf of the patrons, easy and nearly risk free. Sure, sure, Madoff got caught with a pair of pants worth a couple hundred billion dollars around his ankles. He is even earning those expensive pants through bad food testing and grass growth monitoring for the next 150 years. However, he was robbing Wall Street, not the easy pickings of EVE Bank.

Madoff was an idiot in more ways than one. He wasn’t just an idiot for running a scheme that -must- collapse at some point, but he was also an idiot for stealing the wrong currency. If he only knew the risk free theft EVE allows, he would have a slightly bigger furnished apartment than the one he is currently sporting for Cribes. Take Mr. Ricdic for example. The man behind the security of EVE  Bank promised stability, solvency, and protection from a banking collapse. Instead, the man used his position to make off with 3000 British Pounds, put a payment on a house, and stave off some medical bills. What does he get for his crimes? 15 minutes of fame from Reuters and the ban hammer from CCP. I think I may start emptying corporate wallets next week! It sure beats the unemployment the state of Florida pays.

This begs the question, of course, whether or not it is proper for CCP to get on the ball and do what their economic advisor suggested: Get regulated banking and markets started. I’m not an economist, by any stretch of the imagination, but something tells me that regulation would improve the market situation and even make the economic wheels turn more efficiently. To me, the current market situation resembles what a well paid CFO said about the current Russian investment situation. You can invest millions, expect to please your wallet, and suddenly someone in the government receives a hefty bribe from a competitor and all of your assets are seized and auctioned off. That tends to limit the amount of investors willing to invest, pay taxes, and improve the economic situation at hand.

Nothing cries "market instability" like a good old beheading!

As long as the market system resembles the back alleys of the Aventine with an angry Vorenus slaughtering his way to the top, people will continue to steal, rob, and sell iskies for a new cottage in the Swiss Alps. It will turn new players away, limit the economy, and continue to frustrate my ability to convert players from that Warcraft nonsense. CCP needs to do something, whether creating a banking network and stock market, or regulating the current player run ones. It seems like a logical step for me since it would:

1. Improve the image of the game for new players
2. Generate good press from the creation of a realistic market/banking system
3. Keep me from stealing a bunch of iskies every month and becoming a hypocritical jackass

Do it for the game, for the market, for the players, and for the undergraduate business students who need to practice in a realistic environment. Hey, that’s not a bad idea. I thought of it first and demand royalties!

~ by xiphos83 on July 15, 2009.