Pod FLuid

 It's a shame actually because eve has a particularly intelligent body of players, but most things worth being said get drowned out by the seagull chirping of 'we beat you' and 'we didn't wan't it anyway' (sprinkle with generous ammounts of -you mad bro?-)

There's a very interesting British scholar from the 1800's who dealt with population; Thomas Malthus. The gist of what he said (and please, know that this is a gross oversimplification stemming from my ignorance of the subject) was that in any economy where resources are limited, and expanding population eventually exhausts its assets. His theory deals with the effect of welfare in the longterm on the wellbeing of the whole populous; When the effects of scarcity are negated by welfare, the root problem is not removed. Eventually those root problems resurges, and when the ability to apply welfare is no longer a possibility more severe repercussions result. TLDR; when you give the poor a break, you start to exhaust resources that are very much limited. When suddenly there isn't enough food for everyone, you're going to have to deal with a war rather than a few hungry poor. 

In the real world, of course thinking in a pure Malthusian way is barbaric. He was a very important thinker in the history of economics and politics, but he's definitely the inspiration for some terrible veins of thought.

In EVE however, Malthusian thinking seems to suggest that eventually, if everyone decides to cooperate and hold hands; the availability of resources are going to create strife. If every person in null sec decides to be best friends and not fight each other, then everyone will be out here reaping the heavier rewards (in PI, Ratting and trade) and driving down the value of ISK. Even if people weren't clever enough to realize that letting a million people come out and farm ISK in null sec bids down the value of their money, there are innumerable opportunities for conflict. I couldn't count on all my fingers and toes how often I've seen arguments about who is and isn't allowed to run sanctums in what systems; or who has exclusive rights to a static complex.

Of course, it can be argued that null sec space is in no way near being exhausted as a resource. There are any number of systems that not only have no sov, but actually see little or no activity at all since the upgradeable space thing rolled out. In fact, even those systems that look empty are usually 'claimed' by the local groups who PVP.

I believe very strongly, that it wouldn't be long before the PVP minded individuals decided that they didn't like having to share with everyone else. From here any number of things can happen. One person might attack another; chasing them away. The flee'ers might come back with a 'plan' and get on their way to learning PVP in turn. Or someone who was friends with the person/group who got victimized might take offence and jump into the conflict. Hell, I've even seen some people booted and get attacked from blues in a stable coalition because their margins on ships were more than 30% a markup from Jita prices.

I'm not too sure about where I was going with this rant; but I guess the TLDR version is "don't buy into anyone who tries to convince you conflict is on the way out".

In an unrelated note; MVN recently joined AAA in catch! They're a great lot, and my first real pvp corp (wayyyy back when I was an under 2m sp newbie!). I look forward to getting back in bed with some very old mates; especially given that I was too green to really appreciate their company back when I had it last.