Market Discussions

I doubt it. I suspect that it only turned the soft sink of bounties on retired players into a hard sink.

I bet most of the active players with large bounties cashed in their bounties with an alt.

I'd rather suggest CCP implement two things that are available in RL finance:

- expired accounts that after a certain time out with no communication automatically get their assets settled to a previously indicated person / other account. This would be useful in case of impairment / death / whatever.

- accounts forcibly dedicated to donations. They'd be like the above but with CCP special donations character as beneficiary.

In that case I could die in peace, knowing CCP would take over my effort.

What if there was a wealth tax added, where a percentage of the isk in your bank/wallet was taxed by concord every month to support CONCORDS on going actives. This would be a low percentage like say 1%, so it would not hurt the average player. But those who have many billions of isk in their wallet, it would result in a big isk sink. If there is 30 trillion isk spread across all the accounts in EVE that would be 300 Billion isk per month into a tax sink. The wealthy players could convert more of there isk stockpile into assets to reduce this tax, but as long as the isk is in the game, no matter how it is distributed across the 400,000 or so accounts, the overall isk sink would be the same.

This would in a sense make the EVE economy self correcting. the more isk is in circulation, across all accounts, the more isk would be sinked each month. Eventually that sink would automatically balance with the isk faucets. The amount of isk going out to this sink would gradually reduce until the sink was equal to the current faucet then it would balance out, with the isk going out equal to the isk coming in.

Moving forward any change CCP made affecting the faucet/sink balance would cause the total amount to increase or decrease depending on the total isk in circulation. it would not even have to be 1% it could be 0.5% or even 0.1%. The lower the tax rate the more gradual the shift and the less impact it will have on individual players.

Say for example the current isk sink/faucet balance allows the EVE economy to accumulate 70 billion additional isk per month. We know that the EVE economy currently contains about 30 trillion isk. With a global bank tax affecting every person. corp, alliance wallet, and all the divisions. Basically every single isk in game, the entire 30T. If that tax rate was 0.5% that would pull 150 billion out of the game per month. Taking into account the example of 70 bil excess faucet over the current sinks, At 0.5% tax the new tax would balance the faucet sink at 14 Trillion isk total in the EVE economy.

In this example it would take over 9 years for this balanced to be reached naturally. But the short term benefit would be it would instantly stop the inflation of the total isk available in the EVE economy. It does not matter how long it takes, or even if that balance is ever reached, as long as the tax rate is high enough to exceed the isk inflation value what ever that is, the total isk available in the game with reduce each month instead of increase. But never drop below that point of balance.

I do not know how close 70 Bil is to that right number. In concept it really does not matter. Besides that number changes depending on the activity of players and number of active subs. If EVE continues to grow the balance could shift to a much higher number. But the concept is to curb inflation. The more isk that comes into the game thru faucets the bigger this tax sink becomes. At 0.5% tax the current EVE economy could handle a 150 bil excess isk faucet without experiencing inflation. For the average established player with 2 bil isk in their wallet the "tax" would be 10 mil per month certainly not a burden with a wallet of 2 Bil. The average newer player that struggles to get 100M in there wallet would pay 500k per month. still not a burden. ! BS rat bounty worth of "tax".

To ease the burden I would have tax paid 1-2 days after corp/alliance station/sov bills. So the Bills get paid first and you are only taxed on what is left. Not that 0.5% would be a burden, but if you put just enough isk into a wallet division to cover the bill you don't want to end up 0.5% short because the tax ticked first.

For this to work bills would have to be paid on a given day each month, regardless of the start date for the fee's. Say on the first of every month, With "tax" being paid on the 5th. This way you are not getting taxed on the isk that goes out to pay sov bills or office rentals, etc. Some players would manipulate this to minimize their wallet at the beginning of each month, but as long as that isk stays in the economy it will be taxed, regardless of whose wallet it is in. This could at the same time create more predictable market fluctuations. Everyone buying goods at the end of the month to reduce their wallets and selling again after the 5th would create opportunities for newer traders with smaller wallets to get into the market by selling at the end of the month, and buying back mid month when the prices are down. If everyone with a fat wallet decided to keep there wealth in assets rather than isk, well that isk would not be gone, just distributed more. When you use your 30B or 100B wallet that isk just goes into the wallet of who ever you bought the goods from. It will still get taxed. What is the better option? lose 0.5% per month of your 50-60% or mre profits, or risking losing much more if the market for what ever you invest that isk in drops.

Some wealthy trader decides he will beat the system by investing his wealth into PLEX he spends 50B on PLEX at 550M per unit. He now has 90 PLEX sitting in his hanger instead of 50B in his wallet. PLEX then drops to 540M. He just lost 900M isk in value due to PLEX dropping in price. The tax on that 50B would have only been 250M.

This is the Broken Window Fallacy. Yes, the miners and shipbuilders get isk to replace the ship. However, if the Hulk had not been destroyed, that isk would have been available for the miner to re-invest and spend elsewhere. The cost of the barge is canceling out the mining time for the materials to build the barge, instead of being leveraged more efficiently.Are you really going to add M.I.M.A.F. to your economic stumblings? The mining costs time - time which could have been spent elsewhere.

It's not like almost one page of this thread is about explaining why a ship destruction is actually a faucet...

lawl

On a more serious note, 200mil is a big sum for some people, i haven't asked for this thread nor write it but it makes sense. Even if the phrasing is kinda ridiculous.

I usually don't go that deep into the Meta Game Analysis you see.

The nulsec alliances have the biggest faucets and regularly inject the isk into the economy via jita. They get a large amount of isk from anomolies which they generate using infrastructure. Those anomolies give the runner 20M isk per tick in bounties; 3 per hour. That's on the conservative side. The amount of isk pumped into the game borders on the eye-watering.

If the wish is to reduce the amount of isk sloshing around, to head off hyperinflation, then these faucets need to be turned off. Then let the sinks do their work.

Nulsec players will need to expend more energy in mining and manufacturing instead of gorging themselves in the isk-trough and then coming to hisec to buy equipment.

After all, it's a bit rich these alliances go to nulsec to carve out our own destiny (snigger), but keep coming back to mummy for lunch.

I like how you added that to try to make yourself seem bigger.

Two wrongs...