Three comments about albion online
one of them adds to what you said about mercs:
1. I agree with moving laborers within same island buildings, not with trading them out of it, that would really mess things up. Still, you can have laborers in cities as well, so this would make that hard to achieve since you could trade them within a city already if moving between buildings was possible.
2. Crafters: actually I get my .4 resources from either crafter laborers or chests... not from gathering them myself. So they are still somewhat useful alone for this in intermediate tiers. I think it is somewhat unfair to gatherers. I would rather find them in the open world more often, and I don't mean in chests. People who focus on gathering are at the biggest disadvantage here. They get beaten in finding .4 by the crafter laborers and chest hunters, a bit weird.
3. My merc laborers are currently tier 6, I am filling t5 and t4 books only as of now for them, they return 150% both tiers due to good amount of trophies. Still I get more money back when I hand them t4 books, even though those are much easier to fill. As you said yourself, thats messed up.

Jun
Albion Online Fame Farming In Hector
While people have been coming to us to take advantage of our deals on Albion Online Gold. We have also noticed a few people talking about how it is much harder in Albion Online to fame farm in Hector.

Jul
Albion Online changes - Its final Beta August 1st and ios release
I think they have introduced already like 95% of the new systems/content over the past 2 months.

Sep
News Roundup Of Albion Online
Welcome to our roundup of everything Albion Online-related that happened in the past two weeks. In our last roundup we covered primarily treasure chests and shrines. This week

Dec
Suggested improvements from a new albion online player
In general, farming activities progress more slowly than other skills. You can't repetitively farm crops like you can kill mobs, needs to go faster to keep in balance with other progressions.

Dec
Mini-albion online map Ideas to Improve Solo/Small Group PvP
Each map is broken into 25 sectors. The server tracks exactly how many flagged and how many unflagged players are in each sector.

Sep
I got the conclusion after the Albion Online test and feedback
Sure, skill can help some, but the bottom line is getting caught out alone is usually a death sentence. Make friends, quit being a loner. Some games dont cater to everyone, and that is just fine.