It wouldn’t. Which is why I responded to his response and adjusted my view in real time.
“Read all posts before REEEEEEEE”
Teaching pies have pretty much always been like this. It’s a super desirable food but people who gather the beans compete the price right down to the bottom.
If you’re baking a lot there’s the buff for this:
There are other anecdotes around but I have no idea how much this actually gets used.
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REEEEEEE? lol
No, I am perfectly serious. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think it is a good idea. Right now, the issue with the economy is that there are not enough newer players who cannot craft things in bulk selling raw materials to people who can craft things in bulk.
It takes roughly 4-6 months of play time to accrue enough power coils to reach the point where you can power enough machines to overcome the timers and be comfortable just tossing things in the machines and leaving them overnight. The vast majority of active players have played for longer than that time period, so almost everyone can craft their own materials. There is a pretty steep climb to get comfortable, but once you are there it becomes trivial to craft things. So the timers must be increased to match the number of machines that people currently have in order to put the curve back in play.
Then after that, the developers could just add automated increases in the timers that go up as people accrue power coils. The more power coils in the game, the longer the timers take. That way, there will always be an underclass of players with not enough power coils to make their own materials, and the economy will function.
It took me about a week of beginner hunts. Maybe 6 hunts total, so about 12-14 hours of play.
A 2 hour running hunt (or 20 platform hunt) easily nets over 100k in mats and usually 250-300 rough oort on the lower end (the average is about 300k total profit for 2 hours)- at the browntown hunts i would regularly get 400+ rough Oort.
T6 hunts can be even more profitable, hopper cores and eyes and mantle galore… And it takes no time at all to get to 50 to go on t6 hunts.
Within the first month of playing I had two dozen of every machine (except pigment) fully coiled, and 64 fully coiled mixers.
I still never run into issues with the timers, I think I stopped at 48 of everything else and 64 mixers.
The timer-is-pointless argument is basically just a red herring at this point 
But the market has always been 
I always suggest giving spark farming a try if you’d like to see how little the community values time.
Back when I first started it took me a couple month to be able to make everything but that’s back when prices to buy things were way higher, now they are like 5%-10% of that price they used to be.
Overtime with platform hunting being so easy compared to old school hunting it’s so much easier and quicker to gain more from hunts. Plus everyone is equipped with OP bows/fists now
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lol… was the only thing that never sold… even when basically giving away
I remember when spark 
first come out prices were sky high then dropped almost instantly lol 
I think that’s the thing with new updates most can make the new items to quick but if they bring a whole set of NEW resources along with NEW craftable items it will be worth more for longer
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That’s actually a good point, too.
New materials and recipes would create a little stability for a bit, especially if paired with a boost to the ability to earn coins from non-human sources (minter, reward casks, footfall)
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“Always” is also a term that requires some perspective. This comment in particular caught my attention, but first let me note that there was a good while when getting onto planets was a problem. If you weren’t built on a popular planet you could do fine logging in and out at your base but travel via network was rough, planets would fill up.
I remember a thread where some portal seekers members were asking if people thought they were holding the price of Oort “artificially high” at 125C 
The current population of boundless doesn’t include many dabblers. It doesn’t include many people who are only here to hunt or only here to build. Anybody who is handling their own t6 mining has no regular need for extra spark. Same for anyone who knows how to forge titanium 3x3. Though again, with the current base it’s likely to just use gems at T1 for farming/building tools.
For that particular reason, spark isn’t a great metric for “economic activity”. If you are active in other aspects of game play and familiar with all of the way s to generate spark, most players will normally have plenty.
I still don’t agree with those who ignore/discount this cost and effort, but it’s true that a lot of people have trivialized it to that point early in the game. In that sense I think “spark costs don’t matter” is a similar boundless trope to “forging costs are the same for low level tools”.
But actually by the time most players are late game - if they’re miners/gatherers/block farmers of any sort, spark is no problem.
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Does spark cost matter? it should
Does anyone really have a hard time getting spark? No
Basically, i think you hit it. No one has any issue getting spark, so bringing up spark in the cost of an item = a response such as “I have infinite spark. spark doesnt matter”
but, regardless… spark HAS a value attached to it, and it is NOT zero.
Also… I have tried to mess with the economy before… to get it more in-line with actual value. and… it is difficult.
Once i got my funds back to comfortable levels, was going to try a non-profit marketplace. see how something like that goes over
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Yes, but it is probably the best example “out of whack pay per unit of time spent” in the game.
And it’s true, nobody dabbles in boundless. If only that sticktuitiveness could be harnessed…
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Then there was the day that the devs cleaned most of the existing spark right off of the servers