Oh my Sakat, I'm turning into an Institutionalist ...

[Andreas the Wise]

This may one day form a new paper entitled "A Working Economy" (yes, in direct reference to my own paper "A Pragmatic Economy") ...

I've written at length about what in theory makes an economy function well. Specifically, what economic features make an economy function well. But you can have all the right economic features and your economy will still flop if you don't have the right social institutions ... I can't tell you how to develop them - you have to know your own nation. But I can tell you what to aim at developing.

More than one person interested in the economy: This is important, I think. I don't mean to discredit Hesam's significant role in anyway, but I seriously doubt our economy would be anywhere near where it is today if he hadn't had me jumping up and helping develop it (and defending it), and Erik jumping up and doing the bank. If just one citizen is interested, they tend to build the economic institutions (like a stock exchange, say) and then nobody else uses them as the creator can't (it's unfair paying yourself large dividends/taking loans from your own bank etc) and they're the ones who would have used it if someone else had created and sparked interest from all the other citizens.

A critical mass of citizens: Despite my varied experience in economies, I can't put an exact number on this. But I'd hazard a guess at 5 being the absolute minimum. You need at least 5 citizens participating in an economy before there's enough for them to buy from eachother and thus get eachother more intersted, and help draw others in. Cheerfully, Shireroth passes this criterion very well (though I'd still love to further it by raising exports).

Cultivating an Economic mindset: One of the best things in our economy is that I/Hesam aren't doing all the work in paying people for cultural stuff. We've actually, by accident, got a well functioning gift sub-economy - mainly thanks to Jacobus' actions and Ari coining the term. The high up people reward their subordinates for cultural work out of their own pocket. And the Kaiser rewards the dukes. And he gets his money from taxes, so over time it keeps filtering around to those doing the most work. People are getting used to the idea of bountying others so its working really well. Now if I can just get you used to the idea of buying goods from others ...
Another perfect example of this is Toketi. They have the critical mass of citizens but don't have an economic mindset. The Novatainian economy has always had a lot more transactions than Toketi because they just aren't as interested. CITRA should do well, but they haven't got the mindset to do businesses and so nothing much has happened.