That trader attitude is quite immersion-breaking, wouldn't you agree?
But they are right, aren't they? In most situations it indeed is cheaper for them to be killed, than to pay pirate.
What if it wasn't? What if actually paying the pirate was cheaper?...
Let's say, we equally buff sell and buy prices of commodities. Commodity A which now costs 500 credits/unit and is bought for 3500 c/unit after buffs costs 3000c/unit and is bought for 6000c/unit.
But what about ores? They're for free.. And that is problematic aswell.
For every unit of ore mined from the field, 1 or 2k credits would be taken from the miner's funds. Of course, buy prices also would be increased.
"But what about newbies they can't afford that" you'll ask, and rightfully so.
Well, the newbies would have special cheap commodities to trade. Commodities which are vital to some faction's existence. SynthPaste, for example... Two birds killed with one stone.
