Look... here is my thought out response to all of this: I am sure this has been debated 100 times and all points have been considered but I have to ask:
What are you hoping to accomplish? Fix the game
Re-balance the economy? OK great, cut drug prices by 50%, double the cost of vehicles, reduce cop ticket prices by 75% (so cops dont get insta-rich)
What will need to be wiped? All player money, player vehicles, clean out player house inventories (do not remove existing home ownership as that is just unfair)
What will this accomplish? It will turn playing into more of a grind like a traditional MMO where you will need to play on a work vs reward system. Donors will be extremely rewarded as 4-5 times standard player income will be a huge tactical advantage in the first month.
What is the end result? Players will be forced to form together into larger gangs. Smaller groups of people will be hunted down and cannibalized. The server will be much more predatory than it already is.
What is the heart of the problem? Things went upside down when increased vehicle storage hit the server. Do we need to address upgraded vehicle storage directly or indirectly through drug weight and prices? Maybe. I think besides cops just blowing the economy up (1 asshole with a rook can generate like 500k+ in cop money) increased vehicle storage is the point when the economy went nuts as 1 guy in an upgraded hummingbird could pull down $1.2 million in moonshine in under an hour solo. I am trying to think of a real solution, but I cant. Leave vehicles in maybe? Make them more expensive to take out? Remove the ability to chop certain vehicles? This would give starting/middle income players less risk to reward ratio.
Here is my personal movie of the week story: I would spend 2 hours every morning running drugs. I would do small hatchback runs from fields to my store houses until they were full. I would then do small hatchback runs from my component houses to the processor. I would store all the processed drugs in a separate house in case cops or rebels followed me. Then I would make small runs with the processed drugs to the drug dealer. Never return to the same place more than twice. I did a lot of crystal meth because it was safe as compared to the other drugs. I would have to grind for 2 hours doing that to raise enough safety money to go rebel at night. Is that how most people approach this game? No, but its how you succeed.
Do we want a risk vs reward model? Or a time = reward model?
This is just my thought dump, i am sure people here are smarter than me and have figured this all out.