Second point:

If you consider metrics to be the distribution of effort and wealth among projects for the city, you could suggest that a guild picks which metric to take funding from so they can relocate it to their metric. I would suggest that spoil metric isn't cast in stone

Maybe the most guild income isn't in Merchants' interests all the time. I'm certain that's the number one point of the merchants. I think there's a lot of work going into making up a reason why these mechanics should work the way they do. Everyone should take a step back and ask the critical questi...