Gold

Gold sucks. There's over 7 billion gold in the game. Any ideas what to do with it?

I won't really want ideas to pull large chunks out of the game. What I'd like everyone to do is think in terms of:

"What if there was ZERO gold in the game? How would we keep it from getting out of control -AGAIN-?"

This does NOT mean we're planning to remove everyone's gold, I just want everyone thinking along the lines I want them to ;)

We're up to 2.7billion gold in the game. Almost 4x what was there when this page was apparently created, heh.

So I'm trying ot think in lines of an economy. For example:

1. Limited amount of cash in the system.
2. Mainly distributed among the shops.
3. You get money from selling crap
4. Mo mobs have gold by default.
5. To give a mob gold, you would need to create a gold object and load it on him.
6. This leads to tradeskills being money makers, because they can gather materials, create the items, and sell them to the shop.
7. Picture a scroll shop getting all of it's scrolls from Wizards, and other scroll makers. Or the armor shop getting all it's supply from blacksmiths (or whatever we call them), or leatherworkers.
8. Or! Create a supply line. i.e. players could own the shop, and put stock in a warehouse. They could designate which shop the supply goes to (that they own). If we implentented it in detail, the supply could be carried by a mob that could be killed (bandits!) by players or mobs, or a ship that someone could sneak on and pick the locks on the chests the items are transported in (or kill the captain for it!)

Thoughts? :)