[SamBam]

The rules specifically say "Any player, including the one who declined the option to buy it at the printed price, may bid."

May bid. No player is required to bid.

Assuming that, while the rules don't say so explicitly, what they really mean is that the last player in the circle is forced to take the property is unreasonable. That's a fairly complicated rules. If that's what they meant, they'd have said it, not left it up to the players to work out.

Sine they didn't say it, it's much more reasonable to think that they just assumed everyone knows how an auction works in real life. No one is forced to bid on a Picasso when it goes on the block. It doesn't get foisted on the last person on the bidding bench who makes no bid.