I've sat on this opinion for a while (shocking huh?) because I knew the moment I voiced it I'd get slaughtered. But as regards gil selling/buying and who is to blame. EVERYONE has launched their fleet in the wrong directions. it is neither the buyers nor the sellers.
The real culprit here are the elitest players who refuse to party with you if you don't have the "uber" gear. How many times have you been invited to a party only to get kicked when you showed up because you didn't have X item that you were "required" to have at your level? It's happened to me..and I am sure to others.
I'm not talking about a 30 Warrior showing up with a Level 10 Sword and starting boots. I'm talking about a level 10 thief, Ninja, Sam, RNG getting kicked because they didn't have leaping boots. Or at the very least taking abuse for the entire time and getting kicked at the first mistake as "proof" that their 'crap gear' was destroying the party.
THese people, what QueenieXB calls the "Uber-Snobs" are your realy problem. They created the imaginary need for, and equally imaginary value of, certain items. This created a market. Once that happened it was a matter of human nature for profiteers to step in and deliver the needs of that market, at inflated prices. As more people were thrown out of parties due to "bad" equips, the prices sky rocketted. Lets face it, leaping boots have NO reason to be 500K. Hell 75K is a hard argument to make given how often lizzie pops and how often they drop.
Unless of course, to protect their new industry, the profiteers decided to monopolize the camps and drops. Given that they are getting superior PR and Marketting support from the "Uber-Snobs", they are assured that the world will beat a path to their door.
Once they realized they controlled certain resources, human nature simply took over. Why not make a real buck out of all this? So now you have the "Uber-Snobs" working for gil sellers (for free no less!) to help insure that the prices remain high, casual players are forced to buy gil to avoid being spurned and ridiculed, and the companies behind all of this are pocketting real cash.
I would suggest to anyone who has passed on another player because their gear was "not good enough" for your party that you contact IGE and the other companies and ask for your comission checks. After all, YOU are the people making sure they stay in business.