Hi Everyone,
So as we all already know, Glitch isn't the world's first MMORPG to have in game auction/market flooding and instability. Eve actually hired an in-house economist, since managing markets is (gasp!) a tricky thing:http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/08/eve_onlines_got_a_real_economi.html . We as a community could attempt to self regulate by creating funds for say, buying items and taking them off the market when a certain commodity floods (this could also be a way to turn a profit to eventually self-fund these sorts of regulatory buys, since you're essentially releasing these items in smaller quantities, for higher net prices, later). Or, we could ask the devs (any staff reading this?) for a sort of in-game Fed, which would be more likely to have the funds to do this for us. Just like the real Fed can increase buying or holding currency or commodities for sale later by changing interest rates, the GlitchFed could change auction fees or vendor prices to regulate the currant.
There should definitely be a debate on the Forums as to how much regulate suits us (in real life, I'm a socialist, so of course I believe in a strong regulatory structure-- but that might not work here). The Don Draper/Messy Monster Purp Incident just illustrates one of the many perils that a completely free market here allows for. So: WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? Please make suggestions below!
p.s.-- If you have an academic subscription service, the following articles on JSTOR are relevant to the economic problems (and theoretical problems of property) we're starting to see here:
The Laws of the Virtual Worlds F. Gregory Lastowka and Dan Hunter California Law Review
Vol. 92, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 1-73
www.jstor.org/stable/3481444
Sridhar Balasubramanian and Vijay Mahajan International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Vol. 5, No. 3, Marketing in the E-Channel (Spring, 2001), pp. 103-138 www.jstor.org/stable/27750984