Okay, that was poorly stated, I'll give you. The ability to rebid actually causes that "artificial" increase. Sniping exists to avoid that. The problem is that the snipers are trying to avoid anyone bidding against them in a battle and are subverting eBay's poor plan in order to do so. The ultimate conclusion to all of this is that all bidders should submit their bids at the last possible moment. The proxy bidding is supposed to take care of that for them, but fails due to the battle mentality. Sniping is the symptom of the problem that causes eBay's design to "artificially" increase prices, and it appears unfair on the surface to the non-sniper. Changes to the system would allow sniping to become irrelevant, and that change would be detrimental to people interested explicitly in the battle, snipers or not. Oh, and eBay's and the seller's bottom lines.