edit: 4. Macroeconomy - is selling to XXXXX the only way to increase total cash in game? And trade taxes are the only cash sink?
I believe so. And keep in mind selling to base price doesn't actually remove the goods from game, they just get moved to a random region and sold at market value.
Because of this and the fact that new players get a lot of low quality tools and materials, I can imagine this will eventually deflate the price of low quality starting materials, as nate has pointed out, especially since a lot of people now have caught on to the liquidation game. I'm not sure if starting gear comes from nullspace or is actually bought on the market from other players, but if it's the latter it would at least help with deflation by not dumping loads of low quality gear on the market.
In other news, I found a nice abandoned estate I'm currently liquidating that had a herd of 5 pigs I found, plus 5-6 ancient excellent quality oaks and beeches.
Seems to be deflating pretty quickly. The first day I made twice as much as the second. The third about 3/4 the second. This is despite increasing the number of liquidations per day! I blame the wagons and ropes, they used to be 500 each. The tools have dropped a lot as well. Bricks seem to be holding strong, most likely because the demand for bricks is huge thanks to them being used to build so much stuff. Even they have dropped though, and are down to 17~ from the 30s.
Maybe in a few weeks we'll run out of abandoned settlements though if everyone keeps clearing them out like this. That or the market will crash so hard everyone will stop doing it. Then more abandoned settlements will build up again...and the prices will rise and the cycle repeat. Maybe.
Or it could just keep crashing down forever until low quality starter materials are barely worth anything since everyone established already has very nice high quality everything and doesn't want to corrupt their stocks with trash. Probably this.
One thing though, abandoned settlements will always be good for jumpstarting new players that want to start building quickly. Even if they can only sell the goods at floor price, that boost of gold and building supplies is definitely superior than trying to support themselves at the beginning.
The trees guys! The trees!
Stop slashing and burning the forests of the world down. Think of the future players, think of the environment of the world, the elves, the little cute animals in them, the tears of their babies, we got to have some limits here! We already well on the way to ruining our own world with our evil Capitalist ways, lets not ruin our digital one as well!
This oak is amazing. Want to try some? 85% quality! I got plenty, even with 6 woodsmen chopping down an acre every 12-15 hours it is going to take days to finish off Farnorland's (search it, you can see the devastation in progress!) beautiful oak forest.