Ok, Kusari already has general bounties on pirate heads.
Most other big factions don't have general bounties and don't bring enough specific bounties.
Some people don't like bounty hunters to do police work like scanning and confiscating cargo.
Merc's have more bounty possibilities since the bad guys pay more often and better.
(note: capship spamming is not a bh specific problem, therefore don't continue to discuss it in here please!)
Solutions posted:
Each bounty hunter setups individually contracts with factions regulating general bounties (can already be done with rp I guess)!
Make some general hunting of house enemies possible but for low prices. (Best thing! noobs would start with making some money that way, but if they can afford something bigger to fly they probably wont go after it, so they are forced to rp with the house factions for more money).
Give bounty hunters their own space. Some border space should be specific to bounty hunters rule. That way they can just intercept smugglers (yea my idea) before they enter liberty/rheinland/kusari/britonnia space. Yes you make money by confiscating the ware and selling it. That totally rpable.
The point of my first suggestion (which I didn't list) was that reporting smugglers and wrongdoers wouldn't destroy the economy. Bounty Hunters working as scanning police would get a share of a fine if that fine has been paid. Both the police as well as bounty hunters would benefit of that general contract as without the BH the fine would not have been placed at the first place. If you place bounties on heads you get the pilot you can sell (which is mediocre at best). To make that worthwhile, house factions have to give out huge bounties. That's just lost money, and it's understandable that police factions wont do it (+ it's more fun to hunt criminals them selfs).
I just think, as some others do, that the role of bounty hunters is not emerged in fl/discovery role playing, we are an outside faction, which is everywhere (because story wise it's needed everywhere) but actually can't do anything.
And what about having an automated system hooked into flhook that gives all players, which are bounty hunters, some money for killing unlawful people? That way the economics wouldn't suffer. It could even be dynamic, being high if pirates killed alot of lawfuls latly and low if some hours nothing of that happened.
(Note I'm not sure if you can read out id's from within FL Hook)