What's causing all the inflation?

I can't help but feel that the last two pages are filled with people that have ill-founded beliefs and reasoning about the free market economy and merchanting in general due to their choice of pursuing other interests in this game outside the FM. What irritates me is when people that have no firm grasp of the inner workings of a system make accusations and directly attack other people based on their own presumptions of what they deem to be impossible. If you've never seriously merchanted, how would you know that it's impossible to merchant billions while refraining from exploiting meso selling sites or other means of hacking?

A few other points I'd like to make:

1) When currency devaluates, investment in material assets increase to offset the damage inflicted by inflation. This is a prevailing method of counteracting inflation. To the people that are accusing merchants of abusing the game for selfish purposes, I will say that it is YOUR choice to do NOTHING in the face of inflation, but others may not feel the same way and devise methods for retaining their personal wealth. If you believe my justification for wanting to not lose money is flawed then I would heavily recommend that you let an accountant or other financial institutions look after your money and investments later on in the future.

2) To the people that are saying "buy it or die", why buy? How does not buying result in a figurative death in maple? It is and always will be your CHOICE to buy it or not. The merchant and consumer relationship has not changed at all. If no one BUYS, prices decrease. The reason you people keep BUYING, as I've mentioned in my prior post, is because you seek PROFITS from this inflation. Please don't misconstrue the situation.

3) I'll grant you an example of how good merchants are able to make legit mesos in large quantities. Let's assume that a very good merchant has 5bil in pure mesos (a relatively conservative amount). Now's let's assume that he collaborates with other merchants and together devise a plan of making large profits in the face of impending inflation. Assume now that this merchant slowly but steadily starts buying a supply of a certain predecided scroll and let's make it GFA for the purposes of relation to this thread. Over a period of time, with 5bil, this merchant can easily acquire 900-1000 GFAs prior to inflation. Inflation hits. Merchants decide to sell at this point and preserve their buying power. 5m each scroll inflates to 20m each scroll. If all scrolls are sold at a price of 20m, merchants earn a profit of 15bil from their initial investment of 5bil. This could very well happen over a period of one single week. The merchant essentially increased his investment 3-fold over a period of one week because he was well-prepared and planned things out. Tell me, is merchanting legit? Or do you people deem that anything that deviates from killing monsters for mesos is an act of blasphemy to some undying maple god? By the way, please note that while I say a 3-fold increase of wealth, it really isn't because of inflation devaluing mesos so the real growth in wealth is much more conservative.

4) To the people that address merchants in the same category and family as meso sellers, you are gravely mistaken. There is truth in that merchants target profit in game and meso sellers target conversions, however, please understand that when meso sellers inject mesos into the game, the worth of mesos decrease and merchants need to find ways to counter this and retain their wealth. If a merchant does nothing, they lose. Another problem that arise from inflation is diminishing buying power and an oversaturated economy that will inevitably lead to the death of this game. Too many mesos in the game, would mean all legit players, merchants or otherwise, lose. You can't afford to buy anything because SOMEONE will always increase price (Adam Smith, invisible hand, etc) to adjust to the market. In the end, meso sellers win out. Everyone else loses.

5) Current meso to nx ratio is 10:1 as someone previously mentioned. This increases the value of NX. More people buy nx in one method or another. Nexon gains. NX sellers gain. Does Nexon care enough about the game to fix this? Maybe. Their TOS is ludicrious though. If you haven't read it, read it.

I think I covered most of the things that were mentioned in this and hope this resolves some tension.

Happy Mapling~

I personally dislike merchanting because I'd rather the item just go to someone that wants/needs it, and I don't like struggling to find something because merchants have bought it out. It adds extra steps to the producer/consumer relationship that are unnecessary and serve no purpose other than to shuffle the item around from person to person until the buyer that actually needs or wants it has to pay 3-4times more for it than he originally would.