Oops, I meant to add footnotes. Sweeney and Sweeney is here:

http://cda.morris.umn.edu/~kildegac/Courses/M&B/Sweeney%...

It's an awesome paper.

It is an awesome paper, but it doesn't appear to be your primary source --- which you haven't yet cited (it's "Babysitting the Economy", Krugman in Slate from '98, about the Asian crisis).

For example, unlike Krugman, the original paper doesn't state that the co-op is mostly lawmakers and lawyers (only that lawyers drafted the bylaws); unlike your post and Krugman's article, the paper also doesn't talk about legislation.

More importantly, the paper's thesis isn't Krugman's thesis, or yours. The paper seems to be making the point that the implicit economies that develop from social interactions are often destined to flail because people don't recognize them as economies, and insist on applying moral reasoning to technical problems.

But your thesis --- and Krugman's --- is different. Obviously, we recognize The Economy as an economy. So what Krugman is saying is that this story illustrates something about how to resolve a depression.

Which it very well might. It's not like I'm going to question Krugman on it.

(You did cite Krugman's anthology book, which I haven't read but might contain this article).

> might contain this article

Pretty sure it does. The story seems familiar.