The empty shop stands do look depressing, but they’re essentially just a filled buy/sell order for an item. Normally in mmo’s those filled orders are just removed from the list, so you don’t see them physically in the world. We have better shopping tools coming too, granted it won’t allow searching for forged tools yet, I hope that data is added at some point. Boundless Universal Trade Tracker [BUTT] has changed my shopping habits and view of the economy a lot.
There’s currently a minter “exploit” that allows you to multiply gleam value and print out money, I think that’s skewing the market a bit. Less people gathering things for money for example. I think this poll looks really worrying Poll: Where does the majority of your wealth come from? and hope they fix it sooner rather than later.
edit: I see it was just patched 
I’m really happy the reclamation tool is coming where you won’t lose all your stuff when your beacon expires, eagerly waiting to hear how it works in practice!