Merchanting (Price Gouging) -vs- Scamming

(aka, "On Scamming, part 2" Part one can be found here)

On the continued topic of Scamming on the free online role playing game Runescape, I'd like to add some of my own thoughts.

I've often heard people cry "scam!" when really, they're mislabelling what just happened to them - they've either been price-gouged by an or are uninformed about what they're buying, and neither are really the seller's fault nor problem.

Not the seller's fault??! What on earth do I mean by that??!

I mean this:

If you're desperately looking for an item, and someone charges you twice the regular cost for it, and you pay that price they request, that's opportunism, aka price-gouging. Personally, I like to sell things to people who are desperate to get them, precisely due to the fact that I can ask for 1.5-2x the normal selling price, and I'll generally get it.

In real life, the government protects us as citizens from price-gouging, as an attempt to keep things "fair". In online multi-player games, the game government (Jagex) is a much smaller presence, and thus Merchanting (sometimes negatively referred to as price-gouging) is NOT bad nor evil, since Jagex is more worried about other types of "crimes". The raw truth is that the prepared adventurer will think ahead about what they're going to do in the future, and NOT get caught so desperately needing something that an opportunistic player could overcharge for.

Regarding the "uninformed buyer" thing, if someone tries to sell you a pair of white boots for 5k and you buy them, not knowing they cost under 50 coins at a shop in Al Kahrid, it's NOT a scam. Ignorance of the value or availability of objects is not an excuse to shift the blame of you feeling "ripped off" onto the seller.

Personally, I refer to the following web forum page when considering all my buys and sells:

UPDATED SEPT 2007!

http://www.zybez.net/priceguide.php

Page 1 and 2 have prices for almost everything on the game, and the post is updated as required.

There ya go, more information you may not have known.

If you have suggestions for topics for me to post about, please leave comments!

Part three of this On Scamming topic can be found here.
Part four got lost somewhere but will probably come in the future.