The game Second Life has an economy where there are not (AFAIK) faceless NPC vendors, but where vendors are all players just like us.

There are not “wandering monsters” each with a pot of gold and sellable items. However, each player does receive a regular income of L$10 – which may/may not be money from thin air.

I have not done a serious analysis, but there are a number of places that exchange L$ for real currency including USD and GBP.

Also, in regards to WoW – they have a subscription model do they not? So some of the wandering monster money/vendor money could be funded from the subscription amount – as “agents” if you like of Blizzard.

You really have to look at the kind of online game for this argument to matter.

Second life is positioning itself to be a “real” economy.

Whereas WoW is not. WoW can remove whatever they want because you are not supposed to be converting it into real dollars.

Whereas if second life does something like this, it would effect both the integrity of the system and the real total value of the players.

Entropia Universe has a ‘real virtual’ economy. The PED (game currency) is pegged directly to the dollar (10 – 1) and you can cash out at any time. As far as I can tell, that is a real economy, with real estate selling for thousands of US$. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropia_Universe ) And I think the analogy to the Fed destroying currency is correct. This could potentialy destroy an economy, but most likely the market will bounce back (exchange rates and inflation will adjust accordingly.

This is exactly how the money changers operate.

You need to know the history of our money system before you claim to know how it’s functionally different from any other scam on the internet or beyond: http://www.themoneymasters.com/

how exactly does the tax man view this sort of thing?

e.g. i ‘earn’ (however) l$x.. and later i spend some of it (all within the game)… presumably i gain some sort of advantage from my purchase, even if just entertainment (a service).

yet the tax people haven’t had a ‘cut’ (call it protection money) so how is this viewed?

a few attempts at creating barter economies locally have been set up.. along the lines of babysit for me and i’ll wash your windows etc. no cash changes hands, no bodies income is affected. but services that should be paid for and thus taxed have been excahnaged.

if memory serves someone offered to wash the tax offices windows as payment..

i’ll view this sort of thing as a ‘real economy’ when the tax people are present.

The reason is that no one or at least not enough people are making any kind of profit off of this. If they were it is required to put as a source of income on your tax report. But you have to make a certain amount before they care.
As with gambling if you make enough its supposed to be taxed.

I propose that WoW money could be exchanged for real money:

Imagine this: a one-month subscription cost (I don’t know what it is, so let’s say $15) could be equivalent to $15K or $15M in WoW money.

That means that if a player buys/kills/finds enough money in the world (meaning, they play a lot), they rack up enough money after a few weeks or months to allow for “one month free”. They would take their $15K to the in-game stores and trade it, instead of weapons or needed items, for game-time.

That kind of “reward system” would keep WoW gamers playing, it wouldn’t cost the company all TOO much in “lost revinue” (if the cost of “free” game-time was steep enough), and it would help the WoW economy so these mysterious “million-dollar disappearings” don’t need to happen.

Or, they could just create a central bank inside of WoW, with the chance for gamers to group together and try to rob the place; full with “getting caught means you go straight to jail”. :-p

i wonder if anyone has thought of making a stock exchange and have different game economies enteract.