And then cause me pet hate: inflation.

Anyway, welcome :D

except in a real welfare state everyone else would be taxed a point or two per game to support the losers, thus not inflating the total point count/user

yes, but the effect is the same, we get essentialy taxed by the inflation

Unless you can print money... which you do, which causes debavaluation. I wonder if Kestas could do some statistics on the progress of the average pot of a game vs. time created (in weeks?).

What would this look like in the real world ? Wouldn't it encourage people to spend their, say, $100 bucks as fast as possible so they could get more? Or, like here at diplomacy, would status-competition cause people to compete and mostly eliminate this problem? I'd argue there are certain economies that mirror phpdiplomacy closely...like for example Zimbabwe.

It's more comparable to having a guy who will always give you $100 bucks outside a casino when you're out of money.

I think that the difference is that you can't spend DipPoints on anything other than playing again. Therefore, if you want to have many points, and be regarded as a good player, and allowed to enter the higher pot games, the 100 points are useless. Once you get past the 100 points line, you need to win (or at least, not loose point) most of the time to stay above that line or go up.

It actually happened to me that I was close to winning a game, and close to losing another, before I had over 100 points. Both were relatively large pots, but the one I was losing was bigger. If I lost first, the original bet was to be reimbursed, but if I won first, the money I would have won would cover the other game's bet, and I would have ended up with little over 100 points.

Finally, I destroyed the unit in the only SC I had (Berlin, being Russia I think, the other one was in the Aegean) so that it would be taken over quickly, and did not finalize my moves in the other game until I had lost in the previous one.

Bah. Inflation here doesn't matter. We all know by now, because of endless discussion, that points are a poor predictor of rank, and that the point system mostly just works to create a better community and better playing, which it does, and does just as well if there are more points out there as if there are fewer. So stop bitching about inflation, it's not like the inflation actually changes anything in any substantive way. Games don't become more expensive to play in, and you can't use your points for anything outside of the game.

Worst case: you survive with only one unit which will give you 20 points.