I'll be impressed (in a bad way
) if this develops into anything more than tough talk and a bullying attitude. Cartels don't work well in most games for the reasons others have already mentioned above, and mostly those wanting to fix prices are those who, for whatever reason, aren't secure enough in what they know how to do.
Do I wish we could standardise prices to some extent? Yes, especially in component-heavy and item-heavy games like SWG was. It would have been nice to be able to buy [insert item/subcomp] within a certain price range - but logically enough this tends to happen anyway (though it's not as visible when the servers are young) since there's only so much most people are prepared to pay for anything, from a widget to the Uber Sword of Doom.
Would I create or join a group to fix prices? No, because unless you control ALL of the production it's pretty useless. That and I happen to find it deeply unethical. On the bright side, I can't see the one on your server succeeding for any length of time. People can't be prevented from getting raw materials, from improving their skills, and from obtaining gear and recipes, so in the end people will be able to establish their own businesses.
As for the crafting channel... No great loss, if it's populated by jackasses like that. This will probably change in time, too.
/minor digression
Another thing I'd like to see in these games is for the price of raw materials to stay below that of finished goods -- during the hologrind phase of SWG this trend was ludicrous, with grindable materials being far more valuable than most finished products anyone could make. You could see it in WoW back when I was playing, too, with ores and other stuff costing as much as, if not more than, the stuff you could make with them. Given that we don't grind with real stuff here, I'm hopeful the trend will be curbed somewhat.