More Fun To Compute
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Actually, we saw one major sunflower field, that I recall, not many of them. A large one, in fairness, but I don't know if it and it alone is sufficient to be a major component of the economy. That the sunflowers of Dressrosa glow, so they wouldn't be used for lighting atleast, or atleast there would be no point. Also, do we even know if Dressrosa traded with anyone? The layout of the island has rocks on the outer rim of the island, which I would think would limit the ways traders can get in. Importing and exporting would be a bitch.
The tax part is flat out wrong. Kaido's deal was "I will not kick you" to Doflamingo, not "I will protect you". Otherwise, Law's plan makes no sense. Kaido would see his and the Strawhats as an attack on him, not Doflamingo failing to live up to his end of the deal. Doflamingo needed to be defeated for Kaido to transfer his wrath on the Strawhats. Was there even an urban development increase confirmed in the story?
Also, OP has the sheer physics of the story working against it. Again, the people of OP are capable of extreme things. If a real life kingdom got destroyed the way Dressrosa was, it'd essentially be considered unrebuildable, because the funds necessary for it would be astronomical. But no one in story seems concerned about this, so it brings into question exactly how much money even matters in OP.
So, speculation is easy if it's not put under any scruitiny. Speculation that can't be easily refuted due to being supported by information within the story is different. There is a distinction between inferencing things based on known information, and jumping to conclusions that go beyond what known facts can possibly tell us. That thread, people mostly agree on generalities and only quibble about uncertain things that might work against each other (how would horses be treated in Gondor, given their cultural significance?), but they rely on heavy support from the text. So, if you want to flat out make things up, yeah, it's easy, but once it's challenged to be supported, it mostly falls apart. That's why its not dependent on the individual, atleast not entirely, and more on what you have to work with.
That one sunflower field shows that sunflowers are important to the people there and that they grow well on the island. From there is easy to surmise that sunflowers are a staple of the economy and that sunflower fields are so common that people who move to the city feel comforted by something as simple as a sunflower field as their main park. Sunflower oil could be burned in lamps. If you look at how olive oil was used in an ancient city like Rome they used it for a lot of things that you wouldn't think of other than cooking or as salad dressing. They used it to clean their bodies with, fuel lamps and probably other things I'm not aware of.
The city has a port and there are places to dock around it. But importantly it's a black market port. Smugglers normally prefer caves to traditional docks because they can enter the cave at night and do their business without being watched. Urban development I think was shown since in the flashback to when Riku was King the city was simpler or at least this is what is accepted.
The exact details of Doflamingo's relationship with Kaidou is not known but in the new world nobody really goes against the Yonko so we know that even being associated with them is enough to protect an island. Also Doflamingo's relationship with WG was some sort of protection. Anyway it's not like he needed some massive army, fleet or diplomatic fund more that would have a huge cost above what he had for internal security. And the smile trade to Kaidou was important enough to be significant.
With Dressrosa the city has been destroyed by extreme events but extreme events happen in Lord of the Rings and we also have war and natural disaster in the real world. But what Dressrosa still has is it's land which apparently supported the population before and can do still. Possibly the city could be rebuilt but without the black market funding people will probably have to live more simple lives.
If you don't want to disagree with me and instead want to build up some picture of how Dressrosa could be imagined as a real place then be my guest. But saying that One Piece has inferior economic world building because you are in this thread disagreeing with me and not in their thread disagreeing with them is not a strong argument.