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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ixal" data-source="post: 8817362" data-attributes="member: 7030132">The economy simply would not work as presented. Traders would only come to the Citadel if they can leave with more than what they arrived with, be it goods or money. That means trade taxes, and that includes the entry fee traders must pay, can't alone finance the goods bought from those traders.But what other ways to finance itself does the Citadel have? The book paints a rather bleak picture about the industry it can support. Even just supplying its population is hard. Food is already stretched as described in the book and animal products have to be imported with huge tarrifs.Water is completely ignored but lets assume they solved that as otherwise the city would not exist.Clothes? Already gets tricky. You need either grown fabrics, not possible because all areas are needed for food, or animal skin and products which have to be expensively imported.Building materials are also a problem With all spaces required for food there is no room for tree farms. And fossilized bone, the only thing they have, is also limited as removing too much risks the integrity of the city.A fossilized corpse also does not tend to have much in the way of raw material (and mi ing directly under your city is a bad idea anyway), so all the tools from hammers to music instruments have to be imported at least in part.And the list goes on.So how does the city afford all the imports? What industry does it have? As described it has high tarrifs for everything in addition to the guessing fee, meaning it can't even import raw ressources and export manufactured goods for competitive prices.What the author also didn't seem to understand is thats not the 'rich traders' that pay the tax, but the consumer as the trader will simply increase prices accordingly or not come at all. So how does the population pay the high prices for goods? With the guranteed basic income which ensures they have access to them? Where does the city get the money for that? And how does it ensure a balanced trade ratio instead of a deficite when it doesn't produce anything?Edit: Yes, Cargo ships bringing raw ressources and exporting electronics. Or bring things for resale and redistribution in SEA. All this is encouraged by low taxes and trade agreements and not by high taxes and entry fees like in the Radiant Citadel. It does its best to drive traders away.The Citadel could of course employ strongarm tactics by not allowing any trade between traders from other realms and also not allowing them to pass through and instead requiring them to sell to local traders first who then sell it to traders from realms. But that doesn't fit with the utopian picture the book paints and also, because of the high taxes, it would limit the trade to luxury goods that can't be reasonably obtained otherwise. Probably  ot enough to finance basic consumption of the city. Not to mention that it is a very bad idea to anger foreign traders that way when your life depends on them.</blockquote>

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