[core-utility]

Devil's advocate, if Tesla camps on eBay listings for used Teslas for sale and places bids they have no intention of following through on for the sole purpose of driving others to bid higher and keeping the brand value high, this would be seen as manipulative by the end-buyers (though at the end of the day, they did ultimately bid and agree to the price they won at)

[JumpCrisscross]

> bids they have no intention of following through on

That is fraud.

This “group expected that, if it was the winning bidder, it would pay about $12,000 for the lease (based on its $18 per acre bid) out of its own budget.”

[qwertycrackers]

In that situation Tesla would find themselves ultimately compelled to perform on the bids, or pay some sort of damages. They could gum up the works with lawyers for a while but the final bill would get larger as the courts got fed up with their shenanigans.

In this situation the conservation group was fully prepared to make good on their bid.

[FireBeyond]

The conservation groups had every intention of following through and purchasing the land, they just didn't intend to exploit its resources.

[Jiro]

The state is basically selling the oil in the land on consignment. The state sells the oil rights, the group who buys the oil rights sells the oil, and they send a part of the profit back to the state (there's at least taxes, and maybe fees or royalties--I don't know the financial details of the oil industry).

If someone "buys the oil rights" and doesn't sell any oil, they're cheating the state.