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From Free Markets to Monopolies: How Power Shapes Prices (IRL & Hypixel Skyblock) - A Commerce Journey — Episode 9

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From Free Markets to Monopolies: How Power Shapes Prices (IRL & Hypixel Skyblock) A Commerce Journey — Episode 9 If supply and demand decide what prices should be , market structures decide who actually controls those prices . In the previous episode, we explored scarcity, supply and demand, equilibrium, non-price factors, elasticity, and even market manipulation. But there is a deeper layer beneath all of this — a layer that explains why two items with similar demand and supply can still have wildly different prices . That layer is market structure . In both real-world economies and  game economies like Hypixel Skyblock, market structures quietly decide: Who has power Who sets prices Who makes consistent profit And who gets squeezed out What Are Market Structures? A market structure refers to how a market is organised and how competitive it is. It depends on four main factors: Number of sellers : Are there thousands of sellers or just one? Nature of the product : Is it identi...
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Supply & Demand - A Commerce Journey - Ep8

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  How Hypixel Skyblock Teaches Supply & Demand Like a Pro What is Supply and Demand? Well its one of the CORE principals of economics, it practically rules the world! without it nothing would have an established price. You might ask, why? well you've most definitely come to the right place! Today we'll be covering Supply & Demand Start to finish. Q1: Why Does Ice Cream cost more in the summers? Well, to understand this we have to go through the basics of economics and the Core Economic Problem; Scarcity. Scarcity What is Scarcity? Well Scarcity is the fundamental problem of having limited resources to satisfy unlimited human wants and needs or in other words, there aren't enough resources to satisfy the Needs & Wants  of the people. For Example: The people Want 50 apples, but the farmers can only produce 20 at a time! This is scarcity. In Hypixel Skyblock Scarcity can be shown with very rare items, or items which are very very hard to obtain, many people want ...
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Inflation - A Commerce Journey - Part 4 - Ep7

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In the last edition of the Inflation Series, we will discuss how inflation has been integrated into economy-based games, specifically Hypixel Skyblock. We will move topic-to-topic from the last episode (Inflation - A Commerce Journey - Part 3 - Ep6) and cover all the parts and how we've seen everything applied in the game. In short, we talked about whether people had taken steps to safeguard themselves from inflation which reduces the worth of their savings, what steps they can take, and what they have taken already. We then discussed it they thought inflation would increase, decrease, or remain the same in the following year. And we ended the episode discussing how concerned the people are with inflation's effect on their financial security. Protecting Against Inflation in Hypixel Skyblock: Protecting yourself from inflation in Skyblock is never an easy task. But before we dive into why, lets understand the situation of the Skyblock economy, It is a free market which allows pl...
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Inflation - A Commerce Journey - Part 3 - Ep6

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Inflation: Continuation of Inflation P-2 In the last post we talked about inflation, the impact it has, what causes this phenomenon, and what the public thinks about this, we also brought in examples of in-game items to help understand this topic. We left off the episode by asking the public the question:  "In your opinion, who or what should be held responsible for controlling inflation?", the people were given four choices with the option of picking multiple. The choices are The government, Central Banks, Businesses & Corporations, and Market Forces such as Supply & Demand. We finished the blog post by discussing how the answer would be all of the above and why. Today we will be talking about possible steps people can take to safeguard themselves from the harms of Hyper-Inflation, What steps people have taken, whether inflation is going to Increase, Decrease, or Remain the same this year, and people's level of concern with respect to inflation affecting their fi...
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