...they are probably not trying to cheat him, because if so they would have tried to carefully argue him around to this viewpoint before just dumping it on him.

Okay, so, first of all, this seems to be based on a model where, it's implied, no country can protect intellectual property, like at all, and countries just rip each other off about it without any attempt to pay patentgratuities on anything.  And that there's no such meaningful thing as a trade secret, human capital, it being hard for other corporations to just completely copy everything you do -

So maybe Keltham is just misunderstanding how things work around here, but, what if they used other countries' observed abilities to copy Cheliax while this starts happening, as a proxy for Cheliax's counterfactual abilities to copy other countries, maybe very moderately discounted if somebody feels strongly about Cheliax actually being better at copying or at keeping trade secrets and that mattering to fairness?  There's an obvious-seeming formula which uses their excess GDP growth to discount Cheliax's excess GDP growth, modulo above-trend exports of Cheliax to those countries under an assumption that the export prices capture around half the gains from trade i.e. those countries getting richer by trading with Cheliax... actually, no, that shouldn't be discounted because Cheliax would experience similar gains if Keltham set up elsewhere, never mind.

Point being, Keltham is maybe just wrong here, but also suspects that Cheliax underestimates the degree to which Cheliax will become richer than other countries if those other countries try to get away with ripping off the Project and paying nothing on the intellectual property they try to steal.

The tax system is confusing and Keltham is simply failing to parse it.  Cheliax is actually made up of a bunch of other countries with their own separate economies and tax systems?

How does a country invent fiat currency before it invents stock markets, that's insane.

Nobody has attached any reasonable bounds on any of the variables referenced in this contract-code, there's no mention that taxes from some subregion can't be returned as negative a trillion gold pieces and cause the Project to owe Cheliax five entire copies of Golarion, there's no minimum gold amount that Cheliax definitely thinks it has available in the way of gold...

...they are probably not trying to cheat him, because if so they would have tried to carefully argue him around to this viewpoint before just dumping it on him.

Okay, so, first of all, this seems to be based on a model where, it's implied, no country can protect intellectual property, like at all, and countries just rip each other off about it without any attempt to pay patentgratuities on anything.  And that there's no such meaningful thing as a trade secret, human capital, it being hard for other corporations to just completely copy everything you do -

So maybe Keltham is just misunderstanding how things work around here, but, what if they used other countries' observed abilities to copy Cheliax while this starts happening, as a proxy for Cheliax's counterfactual abilities to copy other countries, maybe very moderately discounted if somebody feels strongly about Cheliax actually being better at copying or at keeping trade secrets and that mattering to fairness?  There's an obvious-seeming formula which uses their excess GDP growth to discount Cheliax's excess GDP growth, modulo above-trend exports of Cheliax to those countries under an assumption that the export prices capture around half the gains from trade i.e. those countries getting richer by trading with Cheliax... actually, no, that shouldn't be discounted because Cheliax would experience similar gains if Keltham set up elsewhere, never mind.

Point being, Keltham is maybe just wrong here, but also suspects that Cheliax underestimates the degree to which Cheliax will become richer than other countries if those other countries try to get away with ripping off the Project and paying nothing on the intellectual property they try to steal.

The tax system is confusing and Keltham is simply failing to parse it.  Cheliax is actually made up of a bunch of other countries with their own separate economies and tax systems?

How does a world invent fiat currency before it invents stock markets, that's insane.

Nobody has attached any reasonable bounds on any of the variables referenced in this contract-code, there's no mention that taxes from some subregion can't be returned as negative a trillion gold pieces and cause the Project to owe Cheliax five entire copies of Golarion, there's no minimum gold amount that Cheliax definitely thinks it has available in the way of gold...

...they are probably not trying to cheat him, because if so they would have tried to carefully argue him around to this viewpoint before just dumping it on him.

Okay, so, first of all, this seems to be based on a model where, it's implied, no country can protect intellectual property, like at all, and countries just rip each other off about it without any attempt to pay patentgratuities on anything.  And that there's no such meaningful thing as a trade secret, human capital, it being hard for other corporations to just completely copy everything you do -

So maybe Keltham is just misunderstanding how things work around here, but, what if they used other countries' observed abilities to copy Cheliax while this starts happening, as a proxy for Cheliax's counterfactual abilities to copy other countries, maybe very moderately discounted if somebody feels strongly about Cheliax actually being better at copying or at keeping trade secrets and that mattering to fairness?  There's an obvious-seeming formula which uses their excess GDP growth to discount Cheliax's excess GDP growth, modulo above-trend exports of Cheliax to those countries under an assumption that the export prices capture around half the gains from trade i.e. those countries getting richer by trading with Cheliax... actually, no, that shouldn't be discounted because Cheliax would experience similar gains if Keltham set up elsewhere, never mind.

Point being, Keltham is maybe just wrong here, but also suspects that Cheliax underestimates the degree to which Cheliax will become richer than other countries if those other countries try to get away with ripping off the Project and paying nothing on the intellectual property they try to steal.  This part can potentially be settled by writing some observable proxies into the contract rather than arguing it out in advance, at the expense of contract complexity.

The tax system is confusing and Keltham is simply failing to parse it.  Cheliax is actually made up of a bunch of other countries with their own separate economies and tax systems?

How does a world invent fiat currency before it invents stock markets, that's insane.

Nobody has attached any reasonable bounds on any of the variables referenced in this contract-code, there's no mention that taxes from some subregion can't be returned as negative a trillion gold pieces and cause the Project to owe Cheliax five entire copies of Golarion, there's no minimum gold amount that Cheliax definitely thinks it has available in the way of gold...

...they are probably not trying to cheat him, because if so they would have tried to carefully argue him around to this viewpoint before just dumping it on him.

Okay, so, first of all, this seems to be based on a model where, it's implied, no country can protect intellectual property, like at all, and countries just rip each other off about it without any attempt to pay patentgratuities on anything.  And that there's no such meaningful thing as a trade secret, human capital, it being hard for other corporations to just completely copy everything you do -

So maybe Keltham is just misunderstanding how things work around here, but, what if they used other countries' observed abilities to copy Cheliax while this starts happening, as a proxy for Cheliax's counterfactual abilities to copy other countries, maybe very moderately discounted if somebody feels strongly about Cheliax actually being better at copying or at keeping trade secrets and that mattering to fairness?  There's an obvious-seeming formula which uses their excess GDP growth to discount Cheliax's excess GDP growth, modulo above-trend exports of Cheliax to those countries under an assumption that the export prices capture around half the gains from trade i.e. those countries getting richer by trading with Cheliax... actually, no, that shouldn't be discounted because Cheliax would experience similar gains if Keltham set up elsewhere, never mind.

Point being, Keltham is maybe just wrong here, but also suspects that Cheliax underestimates the degree to which Cheliax will become richer than other countries if those other countries try to get away with ripping off the Project and paying nothing on the intellectual property they try to steal.  This part can potentially be settled by writing some observable proxies into the contract rather than arguing it out in advance, at the expense of contract complexity.

The tax system is confusing and Keltham is simply failing to parse it.  Cheliax is actually made up of a bunch of other countries with their own separate economies and tax systems?

How does a world invent fiat currency before it invents stock markets, that's insane.  Who would try to hold that much currency, currency is not an investment.

Nobody has attached any reasonable bounds on any of the variables referenced in this contract-code, there's no mention that taxes from some subregion can't be returned as negative a trillion gold pieces and cause the Project to owe Cheliax five entire copies of Golarion, there's no minimum gold amount that Cheliax definitely thinks it has available in the way of gold...