RMAH will ruin the diablo3?

Another day and another one of these articles that were clearly written by someone who has played way too much WoW and not nearly enough Diablo. And as usual,the author was way too confident about their knowledge of the game and/or in-game economies. A warning to readers: Reading his article may reduce your IQ by a few points. But if you enjoy watching someone humiliate themselves, it’s a great read.
In the article, the author states 4 “big problems” with the RMAH and why it may cause it to fail. Myself and Flux both struggled to find any validity and any worthwhile content in any of the 4 points he made.
In his first point, he basically makes the argument that Blizzard should’ve sold all items themselves in some kind Blizzard-run item-shop, similar to those found in Pay 2 Win Korean MMO’s, and alludes to them making a big mistake by not doing this and allowing the players to drive the economy. He cites that the sole reason Blizzard didn’t do this is because they were afraid of people thinking they were cashgrabbing. Unfortunately for the author, he fails to mention the glaring reason why Blizzard would never do this, and that reason being it would break the entire game from top to bottom and result in the worst Blizzard title in history.
Worse yet, he continues to make terrible arguments on why not having a Blizzard item-shop is bad for the game: It also opens up some fairly big loopholes in the system. A seller could, for example, use bids from alternate accounts to force prospective buyers into an artificial bidding war and drive the cost up above reasonable market value. A dedicate group could also work to corner the market on some rarer, more valuable items, then use their monopoly to drive up prices. I have the utmost faith that Blizzard will work hard to diminish this sort of behavior, but it seems a bit silly to spend so much time regulating the system when they could save themselves and the players a lot of trouble by simply offering an static alternative to the auction house
For starters, all Commodities in the Diablo 3 RMAH are sold in a pool, not an auction, so shill-bidding would only “affect” equipment, which is highly randomized. Market value refers to the value the market as a whole gives an object, so if some guy decides to “shill-bid” on his own item, and than someone else comes along and outbids it, than that player is happy and willing to pay for the item at that price. This isn’t a “loophole”, this is economics. An object is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Simply jacking up the bid with another account does nothing but risk you winning your own item and paying an additional fee on top of it, and certainly doesn’t increase its “market value”.
Shill-bidding has been around since Ebay started and does not cause any significant issues. In fact, it can cause the malicious user to lose money more often than not from having to pay a fee for bidding too high on their own item. The cornering the market thing is even funnier, considering that items always drop at the same rate, hence this will never work, not to mention the sheer amount of capital you’d need to even dent the market value of commodities.
In his second point, he slams the use of fees by Blizzard for item sales. But interestingly, offers no alternative form of monetization, but instead goes on a anti-capitalist rant about the ethics of capitalism and businesses making a profit. (How dare they!!!1)
And it gets worse. In “problem 3″, he goes on to criticize the ability to buy and sell gold in the RMAH. The most staple feature of the RMAH, and the most obviously-needed feature in the RMAH.
And finally, in his last “problem with the RMAH” point, he criticizes PvP’s role in the RMAH. I should point out that it is utterly hilarious, because he unknowingly contradicts his first point about the “Blizzard should have an item shop” in this last point, by saying that the ability to buy items breaks PvP and makes it unfair and leads to the RMAH “failing”. Yet, in his first point, he says Blizzard should sell items in infinite quantities to everyone.