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EVE Online actually has a very well-working economy. Regardless of whether such an approach would work be optimal in real life, it very closely resembles what a free-market economy is supposed to look like.

The news item you linked to isn't a problem of someone misunderstanding economic principles, but of a simple mistake and the resulting bug - there shouldn't have been an additional reward for surviving cargo.

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Yeah, no argument there, the EVE economy feels a lot more solid than other videogame economies.

But I don't think the surviving cargo thing was a required factor for the LP loop, it only sped up their initial gains. When they figured out how to manipulate the game's idea of prices upward, they basically were able to exploit infinite arbitrage that resulted from the bits of hardwired game logic that made up part of the market without being subject to/responding to market forces.

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