[Suggestion] Stimulate the economy by giving back rupee sinks as prizes for events

Hey EMC! So, as I'm sure we've all felt lately, the economy has been a bit slow, which can be attributed to older players leaving who had a lot of rupees stored up but also the fact that you can no longer purchase rupees so the only way to get new rupees into the economy is through voting which most people don't do consistently enough to add enough rupees to the economy. My proposal is that rupees spent on promos in /shopworld, senior staff services, mail, and basically anything where the rupees wouldn't normally go back to the economy be injected back in as prizes for events. Alternatively or maybe aswell we could increase the daily rupee bonus and increase voting rewards to incentivise people to vote. As usual, please feel free to critique this as harshly as necessary so we can all get the best result possible

Zygmunt and Matthew maybe But 99% of us don't. Sales for many people of most items have noticeably slowed down in the last while

I see you've thought about the conversation we had yesterday. I think this is an interesting approach; I don’t believe we would really need to keep an exact tabulation of how many rupees are removed from the economy to be put into a pool. However, I think you’re on the right track. The economy has been noticeably deflating in the last 6 months. Prices for a lot of things have consistently been declining, and it’s gone to the extreme over the last three months as ultra-rare promos have come into play. The best way to combat this deflation is injecting more rupees into the economy. That could happen a million different ways, but I agree that raised rupee bonuses for voting, and perhaps even voting competitions that reward rupees instead of promos would also go a long way.

After hearing intentions of some very rich players, I think we are going to have a period of 'rubber banding' back and forth as rupees are taken out of circulation by bigger players and then put back in as those players spend it. Prices for goods may become extremely volatile. This is going to happen whether or not they immediately place rupees back into the economy, simply because the supply became too concentrated or removed. I'd be really interested to see how many rupees were taken out in the 500k shop world event. They left the blossoms in shop world for months, and I noticed they just recently removed them from the /promo collection.

All this to say, the economy has gotten smaller and more concentrated among the reduced player base, and we are going to have a very volatile economy for a decent amount of time, depending on when they start to intervene. Over time though, everything will balance out and we will reach a very steady and measured inflation that keeps everything slowly rising. This will prevent future volatility and nurture a healthy economy. This is all a best guess. This isn't a real world economy, so real world economics won't apply exactly as we might expect. I still think it's the best course of action.

One of the problems is people keep under cutting each other to the point where stocking some items are not worth the hassle. This isn't the only reason but it's one of them.

Honestly I've not seen signs of this. The opposite really. Prices on everything keeps lowering while promos costs get higher and higher. I think one of the biggest culprits of promo prices is viewing somethings worth based off 1 sale. It's not always the case. Many times it's just who threw more money for it. That's not really a general 'worth'.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the promo market is on life support right now. 2 million rupee promos going for 20% of that. Obviously there aren't as many data points to reach a true 'value' because promos are too rare, are not consumed and not reproduced. I don't think these extreme price reductions are going to last, but there is no denying that items going for 20% of what they were previously agreed to be is a very troubling sign.

One thing is other players are helping with that auction too

Okay... Neither I have a degree in economics, but I am going to try to think about it:
(Though, because school systems are different, I probably would be around the same level in the field as someone who has finished a college degree in econometry in the US...)

The problem with that, is that that isn't everyone else.
Pete is talking about this thing here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_curve
The richest may indeed have a lot, but most people don't. For me, indeed, paying a million ruppees for something is just a casual thing that happens every few days or weeks, depending on how active I am, but others don't even own that much net value. We have a discrete few who are very rich, and a large "other" group, who don't even own as much as the rich group plays with casually.

I know this is the same in the real world, but that does not mean that that implies that that is good, let's go back in time:
In the 19th century, the wealth distrubution of the western world was about the same as it is now, jet nobodey cared, because those really wealthy invested in stuff like infrastructure and other very usefull things. Because they had this large sum of money, they were able to make the world better for everyone else.
Nowdays, the most rich spend their money on golden bathtubs, which actually (provenly) destabelises the economy, and there are even fewer who own even more. This also is why acedemea nowdays in quite left-winged.
I'm not here to discuss poletics: I'm a Marxist, I know no one here would argree with me, but I think we currently, with EMC, are in the second state. We have been in the first state, but that is no longer the case. "we" The richest, don't add anything to the economy the rest benefits from. We just have golden bathtubs.

In the real world, there are two ways to solve this peoblem: war and taxes. Both aren't really possible on EMC, but the goal anyway is to inject more money to the economy from the underside of it.
One way would indeed be to increase daily bonus, voting bonus and prizes, as that is the same for everyone, that would level the system out a bit, and that would defenetly do something.
Another way would be to create some sort of luxery "thing" that has the following properties: It costs a lot; It is not needed for anything that makes you able to aquire more ruppees; It can be desisred in an unlimited amount. and insert the ruppees spend on thease back in the under layer in some way. Supporter vouchers always used to to this, jet the market for those things seems to have kind of died of, mainly because of people buying them to then sell them for way to little. Neither I know what this could be, but if there would be something like that, it could be a great idea.

That is true, jet I think that that is because of those Faith auctions: I currently only have 3K, as I inserted all my ruppees to someone who is bidding, with me getting a lot of promos in return. I, of course, would normally never go that low, the only reason I did so was because I could get things for way under normal marcet price. This might go back to normal after the auctions, though I am not certain about that.

I believe these price drops are due mostly to that one dragon egg auction and a few of the other rares recently posted. Seems like people are trying to dump them quickly for more money to bid with. Had those auctions not been posted I don't think you'd see it. People who needed those items jumped as soon as they were offered for less. Then more of them for even less but there were less people that needed them. We'll see after the auction if the prices remain the same.

Bump

I gotta agree with ThaKloned. Is the economy low right now? Yes of course. And the only reason is because the majority of the market is promos. As I stated before "

" Players are selling there rare promos *cough* to get enough money to buy these extremely rare items. Plus Faithcaster is the one that is about to have almost 1/3 of the money in emc but if you haven't heard by now. Faithcaster is leaving emc and all the money he's gaining from these rare item auctions, He's giving back in a huge giveaway. I'm not gonna disclose how he's gonna do it cause I don't know if he wants to keep that a secret or not but the fact is when all of these auctions are over and that said money is given back to the community the market will just go back to the way it is. I understand that players are frustrated that no one can really make any money right now and that's honestly cause there's hardly and as of now. Some of the major promo collectors are selling there stuff WAY below market value. 60k gear is going for like 700-900k a piece. 2nd Anniversary horses are going for like 500k ect.. If anything its allowing players who are newish or don't have such a big promo collection and are interested in promos to get theirs for dirt cheap now. (Just my 2 cents and honestly how I see it as of now because I've seen this happen before)

Players have the opportunity to get rupees from selling to shops and voting, but only a few do this when its the easiest way to get them.

We are in recession. And it has hit us hard.

That is why I propose that we set up the Empire Bank. This will be a nationalised central bank that has a monopoly on issuing banknotes across the Empire and will set interest rates and other such monetary policies. The worth of the rupee will be tagged to the gold in the bank's treasury.

I also propose that we set up a grant system. New players will be able to claim a grant of 20,000 rupees upon completion of the tutorial, and will be able to use this to buy construction materials for their shops. Anything leftover can be used to purchase goods to sell. An additional loan of 10,000 rupees will also be able to be claimed upon startup, and this will be used for purchasing goods if there is nothing left of the grant. These shops will be registered by tagging the residence as a shop.

There should be a search function that allows people to search for shops that will favour newly registered shops. Over time, as new shops increase their money flow, they will expand their services until their shops are attractions or are the best and most reliable supplier of goods to many players.

There should be temporary cuts to the money sinks of EMC, such as mail sending. This will keep rupees in circulation until the situation is fixed. They will be reintroduced gradually, but will be more expensive than they are now as and when the Empire Bank deems it appropriate.

I'm taking the mick but hey I'm down for becoming Socialist Keynesian God Emperor of EMC and wreaking havoc on EMC with my student politics.

Looks at this thread .

Then looks at this thread .
https://empireminecraft.com/threads/the-emc-shop-and-the-daily-sign-in-bonus.77144/#post-1442869

Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones

The top comment of that thread is chickeneer stating that the suggestion on that thread will not happen. Also, that thread is a year old and it's time to have a new discussion about this.

Still relevant.

I'd argue deflation is the issue now rather than inflation, and also a lack of new rupees being injected into the economy.

As a self proclaimed old promo collector, I feel comfortable saying the promo market is a terrible indicator of market health. It's always been very speculative and grew at a ridiculous rate, mainly due to scarcity and false supply. It seems that the market has settled in an appropriate place now and we can't expect to see exponential growth on promo prices anymore. If anything EMC was (and maybe still is) missing a lot of rupee sinks, which is reflected in diamond prices being so close to /shop. Changing shop world prices simply kicks the can down the road. If anything EMC should be looking at more sinks, not the alternative.

This isn't just about promos. Sales of everything are dropping because people are hoarding rupees and no new rupees are being injected into the economy. People are unable to spend because they are either saving to buy super rares like the dragon egg, or spending it on deflated promos that the same people trying to buy dragon eggs are selling. Thus, there is nothing left over to buy normal goods, and those economies suffer.