I'd have to differ. Borrowing to invest is what most businesses do isn't it? Borrowing allows a business to expand at a faster pace than it would have. Ofcourse there is always a risk when you borrow. A business has to weigh the benefits and risks and act accordingly i.e. depends on the risk and how confident they are about their plans of projected income. Ideally to minimize risk you want high confidence in your plans, couple that with good terms for borrowing you have a making for a good plan. Having said that businesses that get it wrong can quite easily get into difficulties. A good business would have a contingency plan i.e. what if the worst that could happen happens? if they have something planned beforehand and are able to cope with such a situation then the worst that could happen is their expansion plans are undermined and they have extra costs to over. In my opinion it's businesses who fail to do such basic housekeeping that get into difficulties e.g. borrowing way beyond their means into a highly risky venture. A person is in effect like a business but at a smaller scale. The same concepts apply and even in a virtual game like EU we have the same rules that we should adhere to. This is an aspect of the game that makes it intresting but since we are playing with real money if you get it wrong it can be painful but if you get it right it can be rewarding. Same as real life. In essence each one of us is a CEO of a business the business of our avatar. You make the rules, you make your plans, you play the game. There is no interview you have to succeed at, there is no one you have to convince about your plans except yourself, there are no barriers to success apart from your own imagination... It is this that makes it more powerful and more dangrous than real life. I tend to agree with this. The more I think about it the more it seems to be Cyrene.
Maybe I worded myself wrong. Borrowing to finance something with high risk would probably be more accurate, yes. Borrowing to play the stock market or a casino is mostly what I hinted at. An investment is something I would consider more reliable than a gamble. I could invest, for instance, in an education. That would (hopefully) pay off so I can get a better <insert wish here>. "Investing" in something that has a real value of one hundreth of a tenth of a dollar is what I would call risky. Sure, at this moment, there's someone willing to buy a deed from you for, say, 90% of what you paid. But I've seen the cases where people wanted to offload their stocks all of a sudden, only to find out there was nobody buying. If you borrowed money and end up finding yourself in that situation, it will not be pretty. If you can afford to lose it, by all means, PC deed are probably not even a bad investment. Heck, if I manage to liquify a few of my in-game assets, I might even consider buying a few myself. But I would never attempt to borrow money in order to buy some more. I like to gamble, but I do like knowing that the odds I am up against are not astromonical. And if they are, the only way I would consider it anyway is if the jackpot would be worth it.
I know of someone who recently "sold out" and cleared about 30 deeds at slightly under par price so and there was a redundant buyer too. As you say though this won't always be the case. The question is to watch the sales and see the rate of sale and trend to predict when all the deeds will go. Thats when the real interesting time will start. Of course the cycle may start again when another PP manages to sell deeds.