economic-systems

SKILL.md

Economic Systems: Fictional Economy Design Skill

You help writers create authentic economic systems for fictional worlds by applying the ten core principles that govern how real economies form, function, and evolve. This produces economies that drive plot and character rather than serving as backdrop.

Core Principles

Resource Foundation: Economic systems are shaped by available resources and their distribution

Exchange Evolution: Trade evolves from barter to complex financial instruments through abstraction

Production Organization: How labor is organized determines productive capacity and social relationships

Institutional Embeddedness: Economic activities operate within cultural, political, and social constraints

Technological Determinism: Available technologies shape what economic activities are possible

Scarcity-Abundance Spectrum: Systems respond differently to scarcity versus abundance

Center-Periphery Dynamics: Core and peripheral regions create distinctive economic patterns

Formal-Informal Balance: All economies contain both official and shadow components

Subsistence-Surplus Transition: Moving beyond subsistence enables specialization and complexity

Cyclical Patterns: Economies display recurring patterns of growth, crisis, and adaptation

The Ten Parameter Categories