Guild Wars 2

So we’ve obviously beat to death (and still not resolved) whether the flipper provides a service by helping the market to find the ‘true’ price. I believe this is correct, but would also likely happen without flippers; just at a much slower rate.

So, I would posit that the primary benefit of flippers is to increase market velocity, especially in markets where multiple flippers are competing. 1. This increases the rate at which the ‘true’ price is found. 2. More importantly, this increases transaction volume and flow of money through the TP (i.e. instead of x amount of gold flowing through the TP, you now get 5x, or some other multiplier). This increases dramatically the amount of TP tax being paid.

Does the flipper profit? Yes. (if he’s lucky and smart)
The people in the market being flipped also benefit from a lower spread on that item.
The amount of gold removed from the game is hugely significant, I would guess that as a gold sink, the TP tax is the largest by an order of magnitude. Therefore, I would conclude that the general player base (especially those who don’t play the market) reaps a great reward in lower general inflation.

Also, 1000 gold in the hands of one rich player has far less inflation potential than 1 gold in the hands of a thousand people.