Firstly, one thing I would like to say to others is that there’s no point fear-mongering about a system like this being added to the game. In the way @Janna55 describes the system, I would take it as a system that is
optional and that would actually need to be willingly setup by the market/mall owners and willingly used by the people that wanted to use that same economic area.
With a system like this, malls and markets as they exist now wouldn’t suddenly disappear as a result of an optional contract/rent system for shops… They would simply exist alongside any new malls/markets that did decide to use the contract system.
The contract system should certainly, like @Janna55 puts it, hold both sides accountable and protected from each other, as much as possible. And on that point…
I think you’re right, it can’t ever be fully stopped, but a contract system would definitely be helpful in curbing a few things and making certain areas less “dead” (in some sense of the word), I believe.
And it should be possible to implement a new system to handle these things; as a reminder to everyone reading this thread, it is not really up to us, as players, to figure out the technical details of how such a system would work. We should definitely discuss the nuances of a potential system however.
Heck, as a reminder for everyone, please see this post on how the responsibility of technical detail does not fall on us:
On the point of discussing the nuances of a potential, new, system:
I don’t know what I personally would feel is a good time. Maybe two to three months sounds ok to me, based on my own experience of wanting to take breaks or having real-life interruptions and the like.
I do know I’d want the system to protect my actual assets from the mall/market owner at all times and vice versa, for the sake of being fair to everyone; if the contract expired, the items should simply somehow be returned to the renter/shop owner.