I had this obsidian 10x6 base between bedrock and a lava lake.

One day when expanding it, block lag let some lava in, killed me and melted a good part of my items.
I lost diamond armor, swords, diamonds and levels. :P

I really don't know, how could I live only 6k from spawn...

Changing our currency to craftycoins may work.

1. You get an limited amount of craftycoins per month, no more than that, only less
2. Craftycoins don't disappear as emeralds do (unless we build a casino). Once you've paid a villager with Emeralds, they are gone forever, the villager won't be fowarding them to other trades. That amount of money is out of circulation.
3. Craftycoins have no other use, hence their value is low. Which makes us the ones to set it's value.
4. As we vote and new players join the server, the amount of coins per player/day on server will stay on an average, which I think that must follow our inflation.

I'll try to change my trades to craftycoins this week, let's see who is willing to pay.

Roughly speaking, comparing that "economy" I hope we can achieve here, with a real economy, the trades at spawn are like exportations. You sell them carrots and they give you emeralds to improve the way you work and get them even more carrots. (again in my shit opinion)
More emeralds = more books we can buy and sell
In that way everyone has an better/equal chance to advance in game.

Now think about Vanilla without villagers at all.

I don't know why I'm arguing for it here, I'm almost changing my mind to "every man for himself" and staying 24/7 at spawn to make sure no one will get a single emerald...

@FishW
I've seen this thread yesterday. What does it proof after all?

With all these emeralds they could easily take over most trades, buy books and stuff from players and trade them at higher price. The thing is: no one will pay.

I don't even know why I'm complaining here about how on the edge of the cliff our 'economy' is, after all, it's vanilla! Not a government ruled society...

It has happened.

Every day there is less people willing to trade emeralds. Diamonds seem to have become players's most used currency, which makes them pretty much unvaluable, as we can't do much with them.

We need more emeralds circulating at server... the logic is easy

More emeralds = more trades
More trades = better items
Better items = easier success
Easier success = more bases/life and possibilities on wilderness

In my shit opinion, if we stop the main flow of emeralds into our server's economy, everyone who has villagers on their bases will grow their prices and THEN we are definetly ruining our economy with inflation and shortage of items.

Villagers at a spawn are a possibility for EVERYONE to make profit, so you're providing everyone an equal chance to get easy profit and move the economy.
By setting a trade limit older users who have already made stacks of emeralds, will easily take take over the economy by controlling most trades and the money.

I agree... but as this is a free server, people also have the right to be assholes.

I've been digging/opening this under-ocean 50x50x20 base for two weeks. Yesterday someone who wanted to team and 'help me' tp my stuff from my old base, just raided and burnt everything I was building. Now I'm back to the old base :P