The Problem
With the point price now down to 34,700, it looks as if it will continue to drop without any changes soon.
Not to beat a dead horse, but this is because supply outstrips demand by a lot, as many others have explained. It gets worse. People will continue to generate points because it is still quite profitable, but as more and more points are generated and not used, the profit will continue falling, and falling, and falling. And with it, new players hopes and dreams of ever becoming financially stable.
The Point
My suggestion, is that we turn to a real world example of a currency. Crypto. Except with about a hundred twists to make it make sense(because RL crypto sucks ass)
The primary point(pun intended) would be to make the point(again pun intended) be stuck at a certain point(okay, I'm sorry) of volume. For those of you who can't read past the pointedness(This is the last one I swear) of that statement there would be a limited amount of points available to the torn economy.
The Details
Now without additional changes this would kill the flower/plushie market because the points would be limited and therefore no more could be generated without raising the cap. This is where mining comes in. Except instead of mining with GPU's, we mine with plushies and flowers. For every use of points, you need to pay a variable amount of plushies/flowers.
With these changes in place, to provide short-term benefit for the economy the pawn shop can be re-enabled, because the amount of money that points would be able to generate would be effectively limited by these new mechanics. Later, the pawn shop would become obsolete as the price of the point goes higher because of limited supply.
Another difference from real-world crypto would be that to ensure people do not hoard this new currency(and prevent it from skyrocketing like bitcoin), you would have to maintain it. Again this mechanic would use plushies and flowers to ensure their value stays tied to the point. Hoarders of the currency hoping for big gains would actually be losing money because they'd need to maintain their stash. This mechanic would help the market stay liquid.
Lastly, you'd need some way to ensure that the point remains feasible to buy. If no new points are ever created, but more and more people play the game, then points will become very scarce. This mechanic I'm outlining is perhaps the most flexible, because all it needs to do is create points for new players and add them to the market. It could be a special mission that gives new players points, or it could be an automated system that lists new points for sale every time a player reaches a specified level.
The Benefit
This can create an interesting new type of market that torn will have never seen. We already have markets based around the old point, so it would be interesting to see how it adapts to these new mechanics. Not only that, but this could add a steadfast control for the torn economy since the point currently controls the most valuable resource(energy refills) and the price of energy is quite well understood to be the main factor in determining value of attacks, which is central to torn gameplay.
Now I admit, this is a radical change from what used to be in place. But overall I think that turning points into a form of crypto would be not only good for the economy, but also good for the players as they figure out how to interact with this new form of currency.
PS. LT. Wolf. You are the economist, if you read the forums and see this,
please comment if it's good or not.
I hate to disappoint :P