it cant be though. ive seen people rob the igauna guy in NCR plenty of times, ive even seen his inventory completely empty. the whole thing is that a merchant no matter how good your barter is isnt going to sell stuff at a loss to you, cause then you could just turn around and sell it right back for profit. so the bottom line is having an empty merchant should never happen but it appears merchants are getting robbed blind.
I dont see how a broken set of pa is going to 'break' the economoy, what economoy? As soon as encounter looting was re established player economoy is near 0 but i can see another problem, whine. You give one player a skin/pa etc then everyplayer reporting a small bug will expect some reward.btw you cant steal from merchants, the iguana bits guy is a different case. People are clearing out the inventorys with high barter charcters and shit items is common.