What's the "salient feature" that's missing? From all the other replies it sounds like people are still relying on the handwavy argument that "pay workers more -> workers spend more -> you can pay workers more -> repeat", but can't articulate where the actual growth is coming from. If this is true, the communism would have beaten capitalism, because they would be able to exploit this better than any capitalist system, but obviously that didn't happen.

Overall this feels like troll physics[1]. Yes, the idea that having a magnet pull you forward, which itself is pushed forward by you moving forward sounds superficially plausible as well, but it doesn't pencil out in reality. The only difference is that "the economy" is complex enough it's non-trivial to disprove, and people can handwave away any objections.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/74256-troll-science-troll-ph...

> What's the "salient feature" that's missing?

As it sits, all of the members of your coconut economy are going to be dead of malnutrition or exposure in relatively short order, so maybe address that and then we can work our way up to the flaws in the economic theory that drove the greatest wealth expansion and boom in consumer spending the world has ever seen.