Blendy's Guide to a Better, Healthier Economy

Blendyz

In this post, I will be explaining how to improve the economy of Meepcraft without having to nerf anything more. Now what I'm suggesting may sound quite radical if you're someone who likes a stagnant economy. There is this concept which has been around for quite a while known as a "closed economy" which means that no money enters or leaves the economy; everything must be in circulation. This is fairly easy to achieve and can be done reasonably within a week with just a few changes to the config.yml's of Essentials, Towny, and a likely few others which I can't really know as I don't have the plugin list (Towny, Jobs, and Essentials already have configuration options to support a closed economy).

The basic idea behind the closed economy is that the total money in the economy stays constant. A closed economy involves having one placeholder account in the economy called 'CLOSED-ECO' or something along those lines. With the current system in Towns, taxes are taken from each town and are just magically erased from the economy. With the closed economy, these taxes go into this placeholder account to be used for jobs. I roughly estimate that the placeholder account will increase by at least $500,000 each day just from town taxes.

The placeholder account will be used to used to pay people for jobs (On a side note, new users should automatically be assigned to all of the jobs, because them having to pick a job is misleading and doesn't do any good for anyone). Jobs payouts would be based on a percentage of money in the placeholder account along with the level the individual is in the job. The tutorial should be more accurate in describing how new players can make money. Theoretically, the new player balance could be drawn from the placeholder account, but I suggest that the new player balance is bad and that rather than giving them all this money, they should learn to make it themselves.

The gold market is another issue which isn't completely bad, but it's done in a manner which restricts the economy. I believe before gold had a fixed price it was based on the number of gold ingots sold and bought from the bank, similar to a stock exchange. For some reason, someone decided to remove this great feature. This feature automatically nerfs gold farms without having to reduce the spawn rate of zombie pigmen. Obviously, this would also need to draw from the placeholder account.

Once people realize that jobs is only a good way to make money if you're a beginner, they will begin to move on to selling items using v-shop or player based shops. This is good for the economy, this means more circulation. Along with this increases circulation, the value of the Meeble will increase as it becomes slowly more difficult to earn excessively large amounts of money and more players join (distribution of wealth will improve). Admin shops must also be removed as it detracts from the income of player shops.

I can assure you this isn't hard to do (in fact even I've done it before and it worked great), and that the only thing that really could use some work is the voting system. Monetary prizes should not be awarded from voting.

There are a few questions which will need to be worked out but not by me. Should taxes be constant? Should the cost for a new town be a percentage of something? How much should jobs pay to prevent money from getting stuck in the placeholder account? I can't answer those as it seems like trial and error will determine those variables.

TL; DR - a closed economy system will reduce the stagnancy of the economy by relying more on user based shops for income rather than solely on jobs. This can also reduce the number of newbies from trying to create their own town (which isn't inherently bad, however it takes away from the people who are struggling to get new residents) if done correctly. Removing large amounts of money doesn't fix the economy, getting the money circulating does.

Edit: I do not expect everyone to like this idea, you should do your best to poke holes in this suggestion and come up with what could go wrong so that I can improve this.

Enron

One issue I have with this: if new players don't start with any money and money is never added to the server, then eventually as old players leave and their money sits in their account unused and no new money flows in, the server slowly drains of money till there is none left in circulation.

smk

Jobs payouts would be based on a percentage of money in the placeholder account along with the level the individual is in the job.
~ @Blendyz

Are you suggesting that jobs pays a different amount that changes based on how much is in the holder account (more money in holder = more money in the percentage jobs may be drawn from)?

How would this affect how challenging it is to make money? Because theoretically, Legend must get 88k+ daily out of the holder account that they paid in, otherwise the town will fall slowly.

SuperDyl

I understand the idea behind this suggestion, but a focus on not deleting and creating new meebles does not work. The way the economy currently runs involves staff attempting to keep about the same amount of meebles in the economy at a time. The system works similarly to a closed system but it isn't automatically managed because it would be unfair to players ( especially new ones) if they can't earn money because the server account is out of meebles.

Bloopers

i think hes saying that instead of money being created out of thin air, it gets recycled

which is actually a good idea

+1 if it can be done right

alex77034

One issue I have with this: if new players don't start with any money and money is never added to the server, then eventually as old players leave and their money sits in their account unused and no new money flows in, the server slowly drains of money till there is none left in circulation.
~ @Enron

Maybe the money that is in old player accounts after 60 days of inactivity would be deposited into a different account that would give new players money. Since way more players leave than join currently, I’m sure there would always be enough meebles. May 2018 - Economic Wealth Report

I’m a fan of this idea. Some basic economy servers that I’ve seen have made this work pretty well.

WhoNeedsJimbo

The money from the closed eco needs to get out of the account through multiple ways other than jobs for this to work. If it were to exit from only jobs, then players would need to focus to keep the economy stable and stop a great depression. And that's not good for a server our size, because many players could be here to just chat or do parkour. Also this:

I understand the idea behind this suggestion, but a focus on not deleting and creating new meebles does not work. The way the economy currently runs involves staff attempting to keep about the same amount of meebles in the economy at a time. The system works similarly to a closed system but it isn't automatically managed because it would be unfair to players ( especially new ones) if they can't earn money because the server account is out of meebles.
~ @SuperDyl

could be a realitivly big problem if we aren't careful.

-0.5 It could be a good system for a few things, but it certainly cannot be the main focus for the entire economy.

Legocreator2013

If this is to become a main goal you couldn't just snap the eco into this form. You'd have to slowly remove and replace the parts that create and erase meebles. It isn't a bad idea at all but it needs a careful plan to implement on the off chance it were to actually happen.

Just to be clear, an eco can still grow in this idea of a relatively closed eco. I say relatively because I think meebles should only be added when new players join if this were to happen. Let me give you an example. Let's say I bought some stone and wood off of you for $100. I built a house with it. There are now $100 meebles that still exist, but there is also a house worth $150 meebles (cost of supplies+labor) in the world. So it isn't all about everyone trying to grab for their piece of the pie. More pie can be made it just might not come in the form of meebles.

Summary: Make more pie... Mostly because the cake is a lie.

Note: the example costs are highly exaggerated. My building efforts cost way more than $50.

smk

The issue here is what will happen when there are no more meebles left in the collective bank (where taxes are going to).

For now this is going to be denied.

We agreed that this is a very interesting idea, but there are better solutions along the lines of nerfing and buffing that should amend any problems this might address, without risking making meebles more challenging for new players.