Overwhelming would be the right word indeed..
Ill try to break this down.
How do you intend on dealing with lost money, for example somebody could spend a lot of time becoming very wealthy then bore of the game and stop playing or even as an extreme have their key revoked. Also in this pool is everybody you will ever ban from the server.
For those who get banned/revoked their money would get stimulated back into the city's treasury, but for the others we would have an inactivity reset. If you are not online in X amount of days (probably 12 would be a good length) your money will get distributed the same way as those who got banned. The only exception to this would be if you notified an administrator of a planned extended leave.
How do you plan on distributing the market cap fairly? Will the first thousand people to join be given a free check, or do you have something else in mind? I assume you're taking a classical point of view on the economics on this server, not Keynesian. If the server suffers from cost-push inflation, how do you plan on keeping the server fun for new players who will have to work much much harder to make any usable amount of income? How would you deal with collusion? Monopolies?
I'm sorry, but i'm not greatly knowledgeable in economics. If you wan't an answer on this, ask Brian. He's handling the stocks, economics, inflation and such.
Will there be a way to force users to sign contracts to make deals legally enforceable? For example, if one party wanted to act as a bank and loan cash to people to start a business, what's to stop people from taking the money and running? If you did implement some kind of loan system, how would you deal with loan sharks charging insane interest rates? A hard limit? Would there be a bankruptcy system where if people fail to meet the terms of their loan contract and are unable to pay a payment on their loan, will they be jailed or can they declare bankruptcy to avoid this?
I had actually never thought of this; It adds a whole new spectrum to what type of business a person is able to create..
I believe we'll make loans and contracts, but enforcing them would be the hard thing. The whole system could be very easily abused. What if someone loaned some money, gave it to a friend to store, got reset/bankrupt, and repeated this whole process all over again? That's my only hesitation about loaning...
If we did do this though, a interest rate hard limit and enforcement of loans would be needed. The only sensible option I see for enforcing would be banning :/
Would it be possible for people to create multi-person businesses with a pay structure? For example, a shop where you can be hired as a cashier and be paid some percentage of profit when you work? If so, would there be a minimum wage? If not, why not? Businesses could push this from a hunter-gatherer type game to almost a real city.
Absolutely. A multi-person business is perfectly possible. It's actually what i'm working on at the moment, lol. The pay structure is set up as ranks/"jobs"/classes/whatever you want to call them. Once you create an organization or company, you assign an employee/member to a rank you create, set that rank's salary to X amount and anyone within that rank will get a paycheck each in-game day.
Alternatively, like you suggested, it could set it up that instead of giving a player a set amount of cash each day, they would be paid out a percentage of the money that comes into the organization/company's funds.
Will there be some system of governing and law enactment? Will users be able to run for office to create new laws, or will the laws be set by admins arbitrarily? Will admins be able to make retroactive rules and punish people for doing things that were not at the time illegal? What's to stop admins from making random, sweeping rules that could severely damage the health of the economy?
Anyone with enough political training could run for a mayoral position. They can manage the city's funds, taxes, police force, create new laws, and generally just keep the city in order. The laws/rules in a CityMod server are split into two categories, Global and City. Global are laws created by the administering team such as don't hack/cheat, glitch, troll, spam, etc. Once we compile a full list, i'm sure Adin will post it here. Break one of these rules/laws and an Admin will take care of you swiftly.
Whereas, the City laws are created and enforced by the city's government. Gun control?
Has marijuana become illegal? Is there the Gestapo knocking on your door wanting to routinely search your house? Can't run through the streets naked anymore? Blame the Mayor.
If you've ever played a DarkRP server, the rules will be kinda like that. Sadly though you'll have to choose from a predefined list. Either way, all of these rules, Global or City, will be checked by Brian or myself.
Will there be income taxes? Or will government agencies run off income they have to make themselves, for example would police take and split the net worth of a criminal they capture?
The only we plan to implement are from sale of goods and daily property taxes. These rates would be able to be configured by the active mayor. But don't worry, there is a hard limit for the range of taxing percent. (Currently its 1% to 10%)
Concerning the cops:
Per say a crime is committed. A police officer that is in range is assigned to the task of solving the crime and catching the perpetrator. When this criminal is caught most of his assets are stripped from him -- Some examples being: money on hand, his bank accounts and his car. The police could also get a search warrant to scavenge his house for illegal money and the like. Now of course it wouldn't be this severe with the bank accounts/search warrant and such if you only committed a petty/low-ranking crime.
The cop in charge of the case would get the lion's share of the profit given to the police force because he was (most likely) the leading cause behind the criminal's arrest. The rest of the police force's share would be split between the active (online) cops. As for the money that's not given to the police, it gets put into the city's treasury.
Basically its summed up like so: 40% of the bounty goes to the city. 60% goes to the police force. Within that 60%, half of it would go to the case's detective and the other half to be split between the online policemen.
For that matter, what would prevent police corruption? Would it be within the rules to allow criminals to bribe officers?
I think that's enough questions for now. I don't want to overwhelm you.
Police bribing would most likely exist. Want to swing a case about the murder you just committed? Pay off a policeman that was assigned to the case to lead the case astray from the truth. This could be really fun and strategic if used correctly, but pay off the wrong cop and he might flip on you and turn you in.
I hope I helped clear some things up and explain others better, but if you have any more questions, certainly feel free to ask!
DISCLAIMER: I only got 2 1/2 hours of sleep last night so some things might not be very coherent.
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