The Economy: it's time we talked about it

[CommodoreShawn]

... The economy exists as a progression ladder to late game features. ...

Completely agreed, this only serves to incentivize silent power traders focused just on earning money to use on other characters. It doesn't reward RP at all.

I just had an idea, though I'm not sure how technically feasible it is.

Change the bounties given by hunting NPCs based on where they are. For instance, if you kill a pirate NPC that spawned along a trade lane you get a larger bounty than if you kill one in the middle of some asteroid field. If there was a real incentive to go out and patrol, then we might see more players actually doing that instead of relying on trading characters to make them money.