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how and why are there so many rich people


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I feel like one of the issues is that not everyone RP's their money the same way. Some of my friends consider their bank money to be OOC money and that it doesn't reflect their character's wealth. I've seen people still drive shitbox cars and live in low end apartments while sitting on millions in their bank from just years of playing. Some people, me included, RP our money as our character's money. If I have 95k in my character's bank, then I have 95k in my character's bank. I'm not gonna pretend my character should be poorer than what her IC bank account reflects. If I did, then what even is the point of money itself on the server? Money loses all value once you take the value and throw it out the window.

And there's also no rule as to which way is the correct way. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is such rule anywhere stating you need to RP your money as is OR that money is considered to be OOC assets. So now we have everyone RP'ing money differently. We have characters buying sports cars, because they can afford a sports car with their trucking money. We also have poor characters living a poverty lifestyle while casually having 2.8 million in their bank account. It makes no sense for both sides.

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13 hours ago, Invictus said:

long story short - no taxes, money is easy to stack.

 

12 hours ago, ThatMuricanGuy said:

#Taxtherich

 

Sorry, but whilst it is satisfying to type this out as a response, these completely miss the mark. Rarely are 'simple' suggestions like these actually simple, and very rarely do they actually work. Virtual economies are complex systems that depend on numbers, maths, as well as player behavior. Socioeconomics in a nutshell. On our scale, this means that you cannot just make changes that have significant impact without thinking through what the results might be, both to the amounts of money that move between characters and the server, but also the responses and reactions of players.

 

Taxation, to the extent that it actually has an impact that people seem to desire here, is an approach that introduces a lot of resistance, invites players to game the system, and guides players towards grinding in order to circumvent its effects. Whilst you can certainly decrease the amount of wealthy players in this way, it creates more problems than it solves. Now, you have to focus time and energy on those who are avoiding taxes. Unless you are creating IC circumstances and options for this, which would be sort of fine, you are creating more OOC workload for administrators, who have to chase down more players that break more rules, etc etc.

 

They have an incentive to do this, even more than what they already have now. The incentive is powerful too, money. Virtual money, but still money.

 

Instead, a number of these issues can be avoided by trying to find a solution for this problem, earlier in the process. The closer you get to the core of the problem, the less time you have to waste on combating side-effects of solutions that try to solve the problem later on in the process. Players are able to get their characters rich easily, because mountains of free cash enter the economy through new players every day. We are talking millions, every day. They spend this money, as they should, which is what allows smarter players to get rich easily. Whether it is through selling or trading properties, selling vehicles, selling weapons, selling drugs, or other things of value that are exchanged for money, new players quickly funnel this money to those that know how to obtain it. New players buy these things, because they can.

 

This influx has to be reduced, since this automatically reduces the flow of money further up the chain, and resulting in fewer characters that can so easily buy very expensive sports cars or offer millions for a  Mirror Park house. This way, you gradually shift the balance from what it currently is, to a slightly better situation. Have no illusions, this will not solve the problem instantly or entirely. But it is a reasonable, practical and workable solution that suffers from relatively little community backlash and mostly avoids the problems mentioned above. 

 

On 9/16/2021 at 12:07 AM, KinnyWynny said:

no IC expenses to pay

 

/thread

 

This can work, but you have to keep your goal in mind here. If your goal is to reduce the amount of expensive sports cars being driven around casually and recklessly, then create pointed mechanisms for this problem.

 

I presented a solution here, but it is only one idea in a sea of possibilities.

 

 

The moment you make every mile driven in an expensive sports car have an impact on the financial outlook of a player, they will take more care about when you bring them, or whether to buy them at all. If that is the stated goal, then this should be one of the solutions that can get us there.

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, eTaylor said:

Why should you be unreasonably penalized for roleplaying something? 

I do agree with this, lowering hourly paychecks is imo a good idea, people on the server are essentially farming this money a lot of the time through systems they've built that don't need them to be online a lot, many would dodge the consequences when compared to people hanging out in the world and actually RPing, when it comes to taxes on income.

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Taxation of the rich does not work in theory because it would result in higher prices that the people who roleplay ordinary citizens (middle class) cannot actually afford, of course, this applies only if we're talking about a realistic approach.

 

You can avoid all of this by simply making the UCP application even harder in terms of implying questions related to this issue. That way you'd make sure everybody understands it's unrealistic to have 5 sport cars at the age of 18.

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