The average land baron also typically stays in one spot and just sits there getting rich by sitting there making money off his land. Your usual adventurers don't start out with a house, servant and bank account.
Game economics are different from real world economics. No one used gold coins for the most basic transactions in the real world, Gold was worth far too much, copper and silver coins were used for smaller purchases, then later came paper money. Things also cost less than what you pay in games because in the real world your primary income isn't from wandering into a cave and wandering out with a huge sack of gold coins that more than pays for any expenses you incurred fetching it.
Trying to model game economics on real-world ones seems like a silly idea.
I completely disagree. Giving the player the choice to go rogue or become part of the game world is a great way to add intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. It also adds more play time per developer hour than a standard campaign. This is why so many RPG games have been implementing it.
Maybe my brain just hasn't woken up yet, but I don't know what you're trying to say, or why weighted money has anything to do with it.
