Doesn’t seem like you get what I want to say here about “bad players”.
Let me give you a simple example:
Say there Is a market people selling avocado. They usually sell them at $1 each. Most sellers sell avocado around this price. But one day, a few new sellers come in wanting to sell their avocado. Instead of $1 each, they sell it at $0.5 each or $2 each and either advertise they got amazing deal or they got some sort of “premium“ avocado that is way better than normal avocado.
Customer shopping for avocado becomes a bit split, and some starts to either buy cheaper ones or go for premium ones, market shifted. Those new sellers sees the trend change and they either lower the avocado price even harder to $0.2 each or raise them even harder to $3 each. Because of this, existing seller can no longer sell avocado effectively cause price or “quality“ is no longer competitive.
Eventually some people realise those super cheap avocados are bad, and those super expensive avocado ain’t what seller claimed to be. But this market has already been messed up and customers will either need to pay way more to get essentially the same avocado they bought before, or get bad but dirt cheap avocado.
Malicious pricing manipulation is just one of many ways to mess up the market. You can choose to offer products at a fair price, but bad players can utilise free market to destroy it or change It forever, and customers don‘t always have a choice, nor do sellers.
