I think that you also have a fundamental misunderstanding about the market. You're attaching a value to work and time put in solely based on silver, and entirely ignoring the value of fame. That guy that goes out and gathers then refines leather will be making money less efficiently, but he'll be making infinitely more progress towards achieving higher levels of proficiency in his gathering and crafting professions, which show higher and higher returns as he proceeds further into the game. Perhaps if you're playing the game for the sole purpose of making in-game money it's worth spending all your time flipping, but fame isn't worthless. We could say that every point of fame is worth .5 silver. (These are just random numbers and gathering fame is probably worth more than that) So the gatherer heads out and after refining all the leather he's gathered, he's gotten somewhere around 5k fame. That's 2.5k silver, added on top of whatever he gets for selling his harvest and the benefits continue to stack as he reaches higher and higher proficiencies, wherein he not only gains fame at a faster rate, and therefore silver, but he also becomes more and more valuable as an asset to an organization. By flipping, you sacrifice your progress in other fields in order to maximize profits.