EVE General Discussion

Look... I don't know how to explain this any easier than this:

1. Minerals have a price you can sell them at.
2. If you make something from those minerals that sells for less than the minerals could be sold for... REGARDLESS of how you get the minerals (mining/reprocessing loot drops/gifts from strangers/whatever)... you're losing profit.

It doesn't matter what you THINK the value should be. You are missing out on isk if you make a ship and sell it for less than the value you could get by selling the minerals that the ship is made from. You are not adding value by manufacturing the ship... you're losing it.

You're arguing with a troll. I advise against it. Opportunity cost does have a specific definition, but the guy who's trying to argue otherwise is just arguing because... well, I guess I don't know why. Just that that's his reputation on these forums: being obstinately wrong about pretty much everything.

Also, of freakin' course it's a meme. That's only a problem if you don't know what the word meme means.

1) Your first sentence is accurate. No argument from me there.

2) Opportunity cost is the result of a comparative equation with arbitrary figures, which does not change the value of time itself, only representing doing x instead of y, for purposes of comparison, in that time.
-Example: You could be working IRL instead of playing EVE, and earning far more in terms of translation into isk via PLEX.
-Fun is an arbitrary value in the opportunity cost comparison equation.It also cant be measured in isk.
-Doing x instead of y, does not mean you "lose", in cost, what you could have gained doing y.
-You didnt do y. You never got the gains from y, you never had them, thus you did not lose them, and they are not a "cost".
-Its like saying "I chose to become a Miner in EVE, and therefore it cost me the opportunity of becoming a Pirate instead".
----Not becoming a Pirate, cost you nothing. Something you never had, or never where, cannot be construed as a "cost".

You cant lose, as a cost, what you never had.

3) " pretending that means the minerals you mined don't have a sell value or count as free or that you're making a 1800% profit margin on your T1 production is just mathematically incorrect verging on dishonest."

-No one is pretending materials in EVE do not have a sell value, no matter how they are acquired.
-If you did not pay for them with isk, they are free.
----If I am traveling in a foreign country and find a coin on the street, I can choose either to bend over and pick it up, or walk past it. If I pick it up, I expend the effort/time, and am now richer by the value of that coin. The effort/time of bending over to pick it up is not the same as the value of that coin, it is arbitrary. If I'm fat, I expend more effort than a thin person, but the value of that coin remains the same, regardless of my effort/time in picking it up. The coin itself is free, to me. The coin itself, cost me nothing.
----To carry the example above to explain "opportunity cost" even further, as merely a comparative equation with arbitrary values. What if I had chosen NOT to travel to that country, or walk down that street? Can it be said that choice cost me the value of that coin? Ofc not.

-It is neither mathematically incorrect, nor dishonest, for what it is. You are misconstruing things you do not have, as if you did have them, into the equation.
-If I give you a stack of minerals, lets say as a result of our long-standing mutually interested relationship (which is an arbitrary opportunity cost), they are indeed free to you, and your margins from production off those materials will indeed be that high.
-If you instead mined them yourself, that too will have cost you no isk. They are free, regardless of what else you could have been doing in that time, or what arbitrary gain you could have gained had you chosen to do something else.

"Opportunity cost" is a just a theoretical comparison between two opportunities, with arbitrary figures.
You cannot incur, as a cost, that which you never had, nor does choosing one opportunity over another, "cost" you what you might have gained by choosing the other.

Its like walking up to your friends one day and saying:
You: "Guys, I lost the keys to my Ferrari... Feelsbadman."
Friends: "Wtf?! What Ferrari?! When did you own a Ferrari?"
You: "You know, the one I would have had owned if I had pursued different opportunities in my life."

you are right, one looses profit. Sometimes one might prefer manufactoring at a profit loss, though. For example if you don´t want to / can´t transfer the minerals to jita or a big tradehub, and there is a low and slow turnover of minerals in your area (binding up your wealth in non-liquid assets). You might prefer to build the T1 products (If they sell at greater volumes- faster) even if you loose some profit but have a higher turnover pr. time unit for less effort than the logistics to a tradehub would bring.

Meh, I do this for entertainment, and I'm well aware of who I'm debating.

I do appreciate the thought though! Cheers!



Glad we can agree on #1.

I have to disagree on #2 though. The sell value of a good is not arbitrary, and generally speaking neither are any of the other intangibles people may choose to apply value to when determining their personal opportunity cost on an activity. The value that a person could make doing an alternative activity is not arbitrary, neither is any one person's evaluation of the fun or other benefits an activity provides. For reference:



Also specifically regarding the idea that you lose an amount, that's not what an opportunity cost means, it means you lost the opportunity to do that other thing or make that other gain with that specified unit of time. You also have to consider scope here, so mentioning real life activities is erroneous. If we're discussing Eve the person has clearly already decided to play Eve so our scope is within Eve the game.

Your argument here is, essentially, with the definition of an opportunity cost here, which you seem to be misunderstanding.



I wasn't referring to you, I was referring to Max Deveron whose apparent grasp of mathematics is questionable at best.

Mining minerals doesn't have a cost (barring operating costs, but those tend to be low) but choosing to mine vs buy minerals off the market still has an opportunity cost, and the minerals you mine still have a value. If you then make something with those minerals that is worth less than those minerals can be sold for then you're making a loss on that item compared to what you could simply sell the minerals for.

Since profit margin on an item should always be calculated vs the cost of the inputs it is dishonest to know this and say that your profit margin is something other than the results of this simple mathematical calculation. If a person doesn't understand this then that just makes them ignorant.

Also I'm going to reiterate here, opportunity cost does not and never has meant that you lose something you tangibly had, but it does mean that you miss out on other opportunities and it's an important (and very non-arbitrary) concept in economics. Saying otherwise is essentially saying that the term doesn't mean what it means because you say so.

So, because the worst poster on these forums brought it up and doesn't know what words mean...

The word meme, as it was originally coined, is defined as a piece of information that gets shared. THAT'S NOT A BAD THING! ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S GOOD INFORMATION!

So yes "Minerals aren't free" IS a meme. It's a good one that will improve your profitability. As opposed to "minerals I mine are free" which is also a meme, but is a bad one. In a sick, mentally deficient way, it could be argued as also correct, though the people who take it seriously are destined to a life of failure, which therefore makes it a bad meme.

The minerals, as an item, when mined yourself, are free.
You have to invest inorder to access them, but you do not have to invest in placing the mineral there in the first place.
They are there, for free.

Minerals are a cost only when applied to further manufacturing processes reliant on them.
Manufacture "costs" minerals.
But the minerals themselves, inherently, on a space rock in EVE, are free, as they also are to anyone that invests in a setup to access them.



Yes, all true.
But this doesnt change, that the minerals as present on a space rock, are still free.
And that mining them yourself, after investing for access, is free minerals in your hold.



Even then, they are still free, past the cost of acquiring access, if you mined them yourself.



Its a false condensing, devoid of economic fact. It became a meme because it is an obtuse and nonsensical simplification that is easy to throw around without understanding.

As in my example that you quoted, the minerals themselves are free.
The only cost, is in investing in the means to acquire them.

Where this not so, every mining vessel would have to pay for every ounce of ore it mines.
They would have to pay for the ore to be there, in the first place.
Clearly, this is not the case.

All they have to do, is invest in a ship/skills capable of mining, point a mining laser at a rock, whilst their ore hold fills with ore they had to pay 0 isk for, ergo: free.

Hell, even a free rookie ship is capable of this. You can fly out with a free ship, laser a rock, and fill your hold with ore, at zero cost. Ergo, entirely free.

PS: An interesting comparison:
-Ships which expend ammunition and those that do not in PvE.
--- Those which expend ammunition, are expending a perpetual cost inorder to destroy their targets. It is not a free activity.
----Drone ships for example, however, incur no such cost. The reward of the destroyed ships bounties, is free (without cost).

That is false.

Time itself, is invaluable.
It cannot be bought, sold, created, destroyed or transferred by any means (currently).

However, what you do in that time, is indeed a matter of subjective value.

Holy ****, those are the same thing? I somehow never noticed. My main (this character here) still has some of them stashed away somewhere, from back in the day when I did mission running on him.

Nope they purchase my time, they give me money, my time becomes theirs.