I've been thinking about it, and I think that I've come up with a step-by-step process to hopefully further convince people.

1) Foob locks the permissions on the /sell command, stopping people from selling infinite amounts of dirt. Just in case someone starts selling right away(further explained below).
2) He wipes everyone's current money balance. This prevents any advantage at the start, also in case they sold a whole lot of stuff in preparation.
3) In order to do this, someone has to make the money. Fatnoob (or someone deemed responsible for this task, the treasurer) "prints", or makes the money, through selling a whole lot of stuff, or just spawning it into their account.

Here is where it splits into two different scenarios. Each has their own pro's and con's.

Scenario 1 -- Trickle-Down Economy

4) The treasurer divvy's up the money between the moderators (think of it as a "salary" for being an op), and are strongly encouraged to forego spawning stuff in and instead purchasing them from shop owners.
In turn these shop owners buy stuff also, and those people buy stuff.

Wala, you have now hopefully created a stable trickle-down economy. In order for this to work, the op's have to be paid at "regular" times(every 3-4 weeks, to hopefully keep a slow inflation rate), and the treasurer has to refrain from creating money for their own purposes.

Pro's : Theoretically promotes business growth, gives a sense of accomplishment for working for it.
Con's: A handful of people might get super rich, hoarding the money, and stymieing the economy.

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Scenario 2 -- "Communism" (Very loose application)

4) The treasurer divides the money between everyone equally.

Now every person has money to spend right away. Shop owners quickly make money through this. Again, the treasurer must do this at regular intervals, and refrain from spawning in money for themselves.

Pro's : Everybody has the money right away, theoretically jump-starts the economy.
Con's: People don't have to work for the money. Again, a handful of people might hoard all of the money, circulation ceases.


I know I'm messing with economics, which is way out of my league, but bartering is also somewhat complicated, and using iron bars is almost the same as using coins, but can be used up after a while.

Again, post any comments, additional suggestions, etc. about this.

While i do have concerns, such as the aforementioned stagnant economy, I can see how this would be a good thing. The issue is, there would be a limited amount of money, causing people like me to save it ALL and aquire things naturally, instead of buying it, saving money for only rare things, such as lapis or ender pearls. This would in turn utterly destroy the "market" for everything easily attainable, but be a boost for the rare-items economy. (diamond, eye of ender, blaze rods) As for me, I would greatly enjoy this system of limited money insofar as the money is A) Gold coinage, with transactions being made in either ingot or nugget (gold nuggets are just asking to be used as money) and B) allow for the creation of new money by mining gold. The premise behind this is that gold is somewhat rare, a person could not just mine for an hour and come out with enough gold to inflate the economy, and also, it would allow for expansion of the server (as more regulars join the server, money becomes more and more scarce) and for saving money. In a real world economy, people hoarding money is not an issue, as it will be spent LATER, but in minecraft, economics seem to warp and bend to a new set of rules.

Anyway, yes ajhl, great idea, I would support an initial experiment with it to see if it is feasible in practice, and not just in theory. Also, about the chest shops, are those run by members, or automated by the server? or both? e.g., could i go to a chest and buy unlimited amounts of things if i had the money?

Chest shops are by the player.  You gather items, lets use cobble for example.  So i go and get a ton of cobble and put in in a chest.  Then u do stuff with signs and set a sell/buy prices and anyone can go and buy or sell your stuff and you make any profit there is wether ur online or off.

Yeah, Your right in saying this, but Joe has made a market district which will also obtain non-player chests, but only simple items, no ingots or diamond.., the harder to achieve materials/tools. (I'm Sure)