These are notes from this youtube video
Note: This is my first time watching the video, it was recommended by a stranger, and I don't endorse everything it says, nor the tone in which it says it. In a very John Oliver Way, it feels like its preaching to the choir in a very in-group focused, mastubatory way.

Dwarf Fortress used to have a players economy, but it was removed in 2014 (version 40d).

Dwarves used to earn wages from their jobs. They purchased goods and paid rent.

This was a huge mistake.

Nobles would move to your fort.
All dwarves started with $200. The fort came from the rent itself (see What is Money).
They pay rent, then spend the rest at shops.

If they can't pay rent, they get evicted and sleep on the floor.

This means you had to buy low-income housing.

Better houses are purchased by richer dwarves.

You can change rent to 0, which leads to apartments that everyone can live in, but you can't change hunger to 0. Dwarves cannot survive without food, so they go into debt and cannot afford anything.

If you commoditize food, it can lead to debt. Dwarves can't steal.

Food becomes unaffordable, at a fixed price. Dwarves don't have a job (note: unclear how we got here?), so they get trapped into homelessness.

Going into debt evicts you, even if you're in communal housing.

Once they go into debt, they can't leave. So they keep accruing debt and remaining homeless.

So they are grumpy and depressed, or tantrums, which makes them unable to work (Ah, here it is!).

The dwarves, like people Want to work, so they are sad when they cannot.

At this point the dwarves formed unions(!) called guilds. (Note: *At this point ~4.36, the video plays the main theme from Disco Elysium, which is very funny and apt, but also another example of this video being aimed at an in-group.)

The manager makes mandatory jobs, just like FDR did. But if those jobs don't get done, it's a crime.

So they make a bunch of Bullshit Jobs like making a room full of levers that dwarves flick endlessly. This was called the dwarven casino.

Dwarves can only make money in exchange for labor, so we make fake jobs

Sarcastic joke from the video: "This is a lot more rational than just providing for the basic costs of living for all of the dwarves, no questions asked, we're not communists".

When the working class becomes too rich, the tax collector comes and takes some of the money.

Babies share money with parents, so they start gaining wealth or debt from birth, but no inheritance.

No social mobility.

Can Mint Money

But you are spending les time working, and just run to and from the bank. The more coins you have the more time you have to manage them. You can't hire an accountant.

Legendary workers don't care about money, so their kids and the kids of nobles are both subject to infinite debt.

This resulted in framerate issues.

Contradictions

The dwarves own the workshops, but instead of selling the product and generating profit, they work for a wage.

The excess goods go into a state-owned stockpile, which the dwarves can then purchase using the wages they earn by producing the goods.

Seems like the workshop is actually owned by the state.

So why do the nobles have power? They don't own things.

The transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces
– Fredrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian And Scientific

...

State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution
– ibid.

Change to communism

Economy was removed, production for use, no profits, free housing, no money.

Still has nobles, but everyone else produces what they can and consumes what they need.

See Also

Dwarf Fortress Economy
What is Money
The Grapes of Wrath
Universal Basic Income