I’m really liking these economic development plans. It’s got me thinking about development in general. I know economic development tends to be positive sum, but sometimes certain things can be mutually exclusive. For instance: the port of Oakland and the port of San Francisco could not both survive containerization. The number of US ports has plummeted, even while the amount of shipping has skyrocketed. (Continued)

Annon part 2: So along those lines: what (if any) parts of the various Weteros Economic Development plans would make other parts irrelevant or ineffective? Punning Pundit

So yeah, there are a bunch of parts in the various plans that would, not exactly make parts irrelevant but would cut into the profit margins dramatically. For example:

• the two major canals (Blue Fork and Mander) would split the traffic between them instead of being able to monopolize. That limits what you can charge, how much commerce is coming into your region, etc. It doesn’t cancel it out completely – if you’re going to trade with the North or the West, the Riverlands canal is probably better; if you’re going to trade with Oldtown or King’s Landing, the Mander canal is better – but the impact will be halved. 

• If the various Land Banks and State Reserve Banks got off the ground before the Lannister Bank did, they could box it out of expansion; and vice versa. Bit of an arms race there. 

• If the Tyrells’ textiles industry gets going before the Martells’ forestalling scheme can come into effect, the Martells are screwed. And there will be other cases of competition in future installments.