Actually, my use of Capitalism only applies to the pursuit of profit. So many people quote when asked what something should sell for as: "you take what it cost to make and add a small profit" that is what they consider "fair."
"Fair" is for philosophy or morality discussions, this is 'business.'
Anyone giving the above rationale (the one I most commonly here as a complaint against some crafter's pricing) is not very familiar with the precepts of Capitalism or economics (or is not American - since I am sure our Capitalism is culturally different from British in a small manner and from the Danish in a large manner...) I, myself, as a Physics/CompSci major never took classes on the subject. Financial maven wife aside, I worked in retail for 11 years including 4 years of running franchises prior to becoming a full time developer in the early 90s. I too butcher the attributions and terms at times - but I know better than to believe a price should be based on cog + a "fair" profit. It seems the majority of the demographic of MMOs in the early 2000s did not.
The free market in this sort of game is available to all and all can be a supplier or purchaser or both. Unlike the real world, no one will go hungry, cold or without medicine due to their ability to participate.
However, it is insulting to me, to have people tell me what my prices should be because THEY don't want to pay more. I told em back then, fine - do not buy it - I didn't spend upwards of couple hundred hours and 2K plat to give away the fruits. Either I get something I consider their 'value' or I don't sell them. Worked for me, since I never buy anything (I always want to level a crafter to make it myself) outside of bags in MMOs anyhow (DAoC and axes for my main aside - those were the ONLY item I ever bought from a crafter - I am a HUGE alt-guy and liek to do everything) money is nearly meaningless other than as a thing to 'collect' for fun (and for needed things like mounts or rent in this game should I buy a plot) etc.
So as to the "Mafias" I applaud their idea if not their method of carrying it out (assuming this 'shunning' is offensive vs simply not selling them anything - you see no one is REQUIRED to sell anyone anything - the shunned character ASSUMING no one EVER sells him craft stuff, can simply create and level another crafter to make it or just fool others by buying it via a 'shell corpo...errr..character' duh ;P)
The one temptation I had after DAoC for playing a full pvp sever is thinking about real merchant-unions with strongarm mercs enforcing on sellers who 'don't get it'
hehe - actually in Eve, I participated in tranport/selling (I like SEPARATED markets not continental or world wide borkers
) and in hiring out my stealth-guild's assets to harras market-breakers. I took the contracts only after invesitgating the seller, mainly cos I was still recently from DaoC (about a year prior) and disliked that practice. Basically I played Eve as a simulater and fooled around with shadow-guilds. Was fun but I like Fantasy way more and truth be told, all the buy-selling and dealing was way too much like real life. I worked as a dev in a big name Wall St firm at that time if I recall my timeframes (assuming Eve was out around 9/11 time? I have a notoriously bad memory - praise heaven for whiteboards)