I took your advice and gave it a day off, and after two more days of playing, I've finally finished this game off once and for all. I can also safely say it never got fun and even if the market becomes less of a hurdle in the later parts of the game, it is still beyond a crawl and there was still enough randomness to have made my time with this absolutely miserable. Although, the final research did bring up the scarcity bit I had previously talked about, so if all this misery was intended, you did make a pretty decent art piece. I'll give you that much.