This story was a lot of fun, a playful reworking of some of the oldest tropes of fantasy and mythology.
However, it did feel a bit too rosy-tinted and idealist for my tastes. What was best from a moral point of view, and from the view of the happiness of the people, always turned out to also be the best economically. I guess that this is a fantasy story, and why not engage in one more bit of fantasy, but it made it hard to take this story as anything but a piece of whimsy. Which is probably how it was intended.