Just throwing stuff at the wall here, but with the coming population collapse, I'm thinking we might be able to derive some lessons or maybe even a blueprint for how to navigate said collapse by examining MMORPG economies. I know that in the past economists have studied WoW in earnest so maybe there's still some insights yet to be mined.

How does the economy change once the server population starts shrinking?

I know from my own experience playing FFXI back in the early 2010s that there were regularly specialized materials on the auction house that wouldn't get stocked regularly. In my case it was some fish and for a couple weeks I was able to make good money at it because while there was almost no one supplying the item there was definitely still a demand for it. Then someone started flooding the market and I moved on to other ventures. No idea if the end result of that was a temporary supply or if it turned into a stable availability of the product. Maybe the one guy just made a whole bunch of product the one time and then once it was sold he moved on to the next thing and all the smaller producers like me ended up gone and the product itself just outright vanished from the market.

I imagine the dynamic is quite different now as the population dwindles further, although they do consolidate servers so that might throw a wrench in the fact finding opportunities here.