Open Fixing the Economy

When I am talking about this, I am talking about this in the pretense of Carrot, because that is what I play, not Potato. I imagine that the problem is much the same over there, but to the extent I cannot say.

It is clear as day to anyone that is an active part of the economy, that it is not only two easy, but that it suffers from another problem. Inflation, which will only persist as times goes on. For those that don't know what inflation is, I will give a brief explanation, and tell you what that means as a player. Inflation is where more money is being put into the economy, than is being taken out of the economy. Some amount of inflation is good, especially in an economy server where that would benefit the top, and thus give advocation for advancement to those who seek it.

What does inflation mean, and what does it look like? This is a simple question to answer. Let's say that I am wanting to buy a brick for $100. I believe it's worth $100, because that is what percentage of my wealth, lets say in this case $10,000, that I am willing to give up for this object, this is called value. Value is what you think an item is worth, value can be different from person to person, that $100 could have a $50 value for someone else.

Let's say that everyone in the economy now has $100,000. Because everyone has 10x as much money as they had before, that brick, instead of being $100, it is now $1,000.

Let's say that everyone else in the economy has $100,000 except you, who has $10,000. Suddenly, that brick is now unequally more expensive to you, than someone else with $100,000. What we will end up seeing, is that for items that are required like for example, food in the real world, that when inflation happens, people like you who have $10,000 are suddenly stuck being forced to buy things at 10x their actual worth.

How does this apply to PF? That question is simple. As we see the median staying stead at $100, the mean income is rising by much much more. This is not quite a number that I can calculate, but I would estimate it to be in the hundreds of thousands. This is because of a seeming "economic runaway" where the top few players control so much of the money, that every thing is much more expensive, which unequally will affect those without that kind of money.

Being more specific here, because people like Goku and Coast have billions of dollars, they are going to pay more for items because value is typically based on percentage of wealth, especially in a demand economy, without set prices. I believe the best example of this is Compressed Cobble stone.

Compressed Cobblestone: A quick case study
In value, a compressed cobblestone is worth $892.8 or $57,139 per stack. However, what we see is because this is a high demand item, with in-turn low supply, people are paying $2,000,000 per stack or 35x its actual value. If we look at this in a more realistic sense and include labor costs, even at the absolute most liberal answer here is that even at 10x the cost of production being used as our labor estimate, we see that it is still almost FOUR TIMES its actual value in market value.

What do we do about it?
Solution 1:
Reset the server. The server was made with an economy that was doomed to fail because of hyper inflation. The prices are too high, and the market supply base is too low. Jobs are paying millions of dollars, even for simple tasks. The fact is, the economy is broken, in every sense of the word. Without any out pouring of money in the economy it will never recover.
Solution 2:
Decreasing the mean income, through balance clearing, or partial balance clearing systems. This in the most basic sense, means to wipe peoples accounts either periodically, which I do not recommend, or to have them clear it themselves in chase of a reward. I have suggested a system like this where Prestige++++'s can reset their accounts and return to default with no balance. This would almost certainly clear the economy. However, this is not a perfect solution, as they still hold all of the assets. The solution to this, could be to either relinquish all claims, which I do not recommend, or too instead increase the supply at which these items flow inside the economy. This can be done by make rare items, slowly more common overtime, and releasing rarer and better tools in new crates. A perfect example of this, is if you look at sports games. Most of them have something similar to a player collection system, where they can get "cards" of a player that are better or worse, but reset each year starting back were the were. For example, at the start of a reset the best hoe could be Fortune V, at the end it could be Fortune XX. Then, when the server would reset, and the best how would be Fortune V once more.
Solution 3:
Make sure that money flows out of the economy. The simplest way to do this, is to simply give people with a lot of money something to spend their money on, that they would actually want to of course. It is the case that a lot of the time the only time people are spending significant amount of money is on the open market, on things like tools and crate items. The shop should also have appealing items, these can be things that people hold of value, such as buyable tools.
Solution 4:
This is a temporary fix. Add more ranks. This would only hold off the problem, as more ranks means higher prices, which is turn means that the problem on the short-hand will be mitigated, it will, in the long term actually be MUCH WORSE.

I would like to see active discussion as to what exactly people think about possible fixes for this, if you have a solution make sure to say it. But to be frank, people will more than likely stop playing PF because the eco is too easy, and money is hard to get for new players, and simply not worth anything. Will there always be rich people? Yes, people that play the server a lot, deserve to be rewarded, and the will. However when the gap is that far from the average player? And there is a LOT of Prestige++++'s, there is an issue.