Market Discussions

bleh.

Now who's pretending this is the reall world ?

Tekota covered the important points but just to address this one, if you scam or default your (public) credit is indeed destroyed. It is very, very rare indeed for a scammer or defaulter to get a second bite at the cherry. Of course, you can argue that the credit problems will be associated with just one character but the canny investor will make sure that considerable effort goes into making a character 'credit-worthy' in the first place and at least some of this effort will be counted against the value of the scam. If it takes you 100 hours of posting on MD to get sufficiently established, or some combination of posting and having an auditable trade history and skill profile, in order to carry out a reasonable sized scam (say 10bil) then the scam won't net you much more than if you spent that time running incursions. This by no means provides 'security' to investors but it can help ensure that there is some minimal cost to scamming and also provides a barrier to entry for those who are too lazy to do the groundwork.

I depends on the investor. I would avoid generalising from the willingness of the investment market as a whole to invest in scams to the willingness of individual investors. A large number of scams occur because some people are willing to invest in bad investments. This doesn't really have any negative effect on those investors who are more picky and get scammed far less often or not at all. For all that there are useful tools to increase the entry barriers, not everyone makes use of those tools for various reasons. Some investors are not aware of the tools available, don't carry out proper risk assessment and/or rely overmuch on reputation. Other investors might have made a bunch of cash and then semi-retired from the game. They might be investing in higher risk ventures because they are just not too fussed about losing their money but think it would be nice to keep making a bit just in case they do come back.

In general, though, it's not quite as easy as you suggest to get a first time bond going. There is one example of someone just handing over isk to a completely unknown quantity on the front page at the moment but that is by no means typical and was also not motivated by any real desire to make money.

Edit - Try going back a few pages and see just how many people get isk from investors under the circumstances you identify. I don't think you'll find many. By far the biggest risks to investors are the big 'blue chip' investment vehicles. If it weren't for the big scams the impact of the small scammers you talk about who do succeed would be trivial.

also if people go on breaks from eve it might make sense. But yeah if the choice is risking your isk on some speculative market positions or giving it to a stranger for promised returns than which is really the most risky?

In my opinion there is actually little reason to legitimately need a loan for investing activities in this game where you would want to give the borrower the loan. Why would you want to give a loan to someone who is just starting to trade for example. By the time he has enough experience and skill points he should have more than enough isk to sustain his investing activities on his own. This is not to mention that your roi tends to drop as your investment capital increases (unless you put in exponentinally more time into it)making so the extra infusion of cash quite meaningless.

Roleplaying is mostly the reason.

Ah Thanks all for the replies!

I am so sorry. I think I am beginning to understand. A long time ago, you must have given $5 to what you could only imagine to be a poor homeless person, who then proceeded to kill everyone you had ever known or loved. You have never been able to form another bond of trust again. Your passionate, evangelical hatred and fear of lending is an attempt to deal with the grief of your lost love ones.

Darth is one of those people on my ignore list so I'm usually quite happy to not see his comments. However, in this case his comments do not deserve the characterizing you have given them. In fact, I find nothing wrong with what he is saying. It is a fair critical assessment, albeit pessimistic, of the overall situation.

The word "hate" implies I care in some way, shape or form.

Like I said, I find you amusing, if anything.