So - if Mainstreet puts stuff on the AH that Bigbiz is trying to 'corner,' you're saying Bigbiz is not allowed to buy Mainstreet's items and repost them at higher prices?

How does that make Mainstreet sad? He put in the time and got his gold. Win-win.

Or (more likely)

Are you saying that Mainstreet should be allowed to charge people his price regardless of what Bigbiz's 'low price that makes Mainstreet's effort not pay what he deserves?'

How is that bad? Mainstreet should have checked the AH to see what the expected rate of return was on his time investment before he went & did his farming. If Bigbiz is selling 30 hakkari bijous for 20s each and Mainstreet was hoping to sell the 8 he farmed for a few gold a piece, then how does that make Bigbiz a bad guy?

- maybe they were never worth a few gold each
- maybe they were worth a few gold each last weekend but are not worth that today because Bigbiz decided he didn't want that stuff in his bank

Does everyone on the server have to pay into a fund so Mainstreet can get what he expected as a return on his time? If you think they should, I'll gladly manage that fund ;) .

The problem with that analogy is that in WoW, the playing field is generally level, whereas in real life, it is no where even close to level.

So a business person wants to make money. In wow it would be as you posted:

"I don't actually have anything I want to buy, but I'm pretty bored, so I'll take over the more popular markets this weekend." ---Bigbiz the 4 Warlock

In real life, it would be like this:

"I don't need another billion dollars, but I feel like buying 18 new villas in Italy. So I'm going to give my friend Mr. Sleazy Senator 2 million dollars, and he'll make sure we get that sweetheart tax break that will net us 10 billion dollars."

You can insert almost any industry, and any high-ranking government agent in that phrasing. Political bribes, I mean donations, are simply one of the best ways a big company can invest their money to get a return on their investment. Meanwhile, giving someone like Variann wrynn 100,000 gold won't get you squat in wow. He's not going to pay you 10x that amount for some war materiel, he's not going to bail out your bank alt if you lost a million gold.

WoW has a great economy, in large part because there is no favoritism, and in servers with mature markets, supply and demand tend to match up well, with reversions to the mean when things get out of balance. This is opposed to the socialized politico-economic systems we have worldwide today, where governments actively support further and further imbalances in the system. Where BigBiz has the advantage IRL due to government support, BigBiz has to succeed solely on his own merits, and there is too much competition in mature wow servers for him to really have a monopoly. And if he tries to monopolize by buying people out, then mainstreet again wins since the value of their farmed materials will go up.