A few things on this:
1.) For the mining, it depends primarily on location and secondarily on actual mining methods. In undisturbed land, it's pretty easy to make $10k in an hour, and depending on how mined the location is, that amount can go down dramatically. In Europe, the amount of gold can be quite low.
2.) I have to know what exactly you mean by "older times". What did you trade, and was this earlier in n2, or was it n1? Because around the CCNet world, there are a number of pretty sought-after commodities (Coal, Gravel, Runes, Ships), that have markets quite open. And keep in mind that there are nations that have import, industry, and internal economies.
3.) The Upkeep thing may be a good point. Europe has a massively deflated economy to other regions of the world, and it seems like most transactions in Europe are to nations outside of the region, meaning that there's a constant outflow of wealth (not to mention consistent war to drain wealth). However, instead of decreasing upkeep, it may be good to increase silver value just a touch, so that the work can be put in by places relatively devoid of gold to have a better chance at competitive economies built around nations in Europe, as opposed to just putting a band-aid on the problem.
4.) Quite honestly, I think that having better economies would be great for the server. What do you think specifically would be a good change? Do you want jobs back, should something like the auction house be expanded, or is there a new mechanic you have in mind? The economy has changed a lot between n1 and n2, and even throughout n2, so depending on what time you were successful in trading may dictate what you want. And if may be good to say when and how you were successful, so that staff can have a basis to work off of.

I sincerely doubt the mining part,if one gold ignot is 9 $ you'll need thousands to make,you know..thousands. The rarity of gold ores isn't the same as iron and I wouldn't be suprised if there is a cheesy way around gold mining,considering most regions are depleted anyway.

I'm refering to early n2,people were actually buying secondary uneccessary fun stuff(I was mostly selling alchohol and buying other valuables/developing with the income.)Now please don't tell me people actually buy coal and gravel,that must be a joke (no offense in any way) I'll have a hard time believing people would buy the most common resources ever. Yes I do know runes and ships are still a market,but why should the whole trade resolve around runes(I've pointed this out in tons of suggestions before about the same topic)

I've talked before about n1 outposts,maybe they should be readded in a more balanced manner. For me n1 was quite balanced economically because no one told me the cheesy ways around economy so I was using bread for the only income and it was still quite hard in the end.

The whole mining thing is so broken and if a n3 ever happens,people will say it was OP for the ones that did it just like people say nowadays for n1 jobs and such. I dont know,it seems very obvious and I dont know why no one talks about it.

But hey atleast voting income increased a while ago!

You're correct on the mining being op, but trust me, 6 explosive netherite picks does wonders for good mining. It's not a cheesy way around it, it's just optimization xD.

I'm speaking from the point that I see, and that's in Oceania, where there are a number of people who work with sf to get materials, grind money from gravel, or utilize runes for tools and sets. They may not exist everywhere, but they certainly do where I am.

Honestly yeah, when we're talking about the markets now, it's very much so limited to a few things. The fact is that most valuables from early n2 (Potions, sets, swords, diamonds, oil, slimefun materials, slimefun machines) are currently not at all traded. It seems like most people have what they want, and the fact that runes are even on the table is because they are so versatile and can be lost pretty easily through war or general use. The problem is trying to find things that people actually want, which is really rough right now.

I do think that the thing the old outposts had for them was the fact they linked up people who weren't really familiar with CCNet mechanics to the economy. The problem is that they were so damn exploitable. I think that it may be something that could be added, but it has to be in some other fashion that doesn't lead to hyper-inflation. Also, very quickly, what did you buy in n1, or was that money you got just used towards upkeep?

The reason on n1 trade was so frequent atleast for me was that I didn't know how to do shit and needed to buy things to compensate for that, come around late game n1 I figured out how op some jobs and the outposts were and since then I haven't really imported anything

Man, the entire economy of this server is: get diamond pick, get runes, enchant pick, make netherite pick, mine until there isnt a single gold ore in your nation, end of economy go mine somwhere else. It is annoying for the player that join the server and has to mine a lot, it is not sostenible in the long term, do you want to get gold in another way that doesnt you to do the same damn action every day? You can try fishing and try to get thr 2% uncommon treasure of mcmmo and get 1-4 gold ingots lol there is no other

How to ruin the best economy CCnet have ever had.

If we were talking about decreasing upkeep, how much by? $1 per chunk or $0.75? Even that still sounds too little

the ratio of it is broken, u make a one chunk town it's too cheap, if u make a decent sized town, it's very expensive

If you make a big city you should have the respurces to keep it up, if you can't just devrease the size. Current price is fair and needs no changements

Eh I don't really think the upkeep need's to be decreased after a certain amount of claims one would only assume youre not just a one man town and should be able to atleast have one other person who can also provide monies for it.

If you are going to decrease upkeep
try having it scale, as at large sizes one could assume that you can make lots of money per day, as such a money sink for that 30k a day you make is not a bad thing.

while smaller towns have the ability to last longer as they set up

For small towns: give them a -20$ cost to upkeep, to a minimum of 0$. It lasts for a week, or maybe two weeks, as the bonus gradually disappears. small enough to not be exploitable by older players, but large enough to be meaningful to new ones.

As for outposts, make it so that as you sell stuff, the money you get for the stuff decreases exponentially. The price resets every week. This additionally gives nations with lots of people a way to make more money, and also produces "work" for the people (shipping the goods). The government will need to think of an elaborate scamming technique to convince the people to hand over their money to the government voluntarily.
Crops that grow farther away from the outposts produce more money. SF crops could be given a premium price. Every week, a certain crop and/or SF crop is more sought-after and gets a price bonus.
In addition, the outposts count how many crops they bought last week and keep track of how many crops they go in surplus and how many they go in deficit. If a crop has been sold so much that there is a 'surplus' on the market, then nothing happens. Surplus is calculated in a manner by which the surplus growth slows as the surplus becomes larger, in addition to decreasing by a set amount. For the surplus to grow, it must therefore overcome the reduction with its over-surplus modifier applied.

But if a crop hasn't been sold enough to ensure a surplus, it will enter a 'deficit' and increases in value. Perharps the price is based on a square-root function (sqrt(x + 1)), where x is a set amount of items in deficit (eg 2000 items, 32 stacks) and the +1 is there to ensure that we don't go below the standard/minimum price when there isn't a decifit. The deficit growth is governed by a similiar function to surplus growth, so that it never reaches ridiculous levels and is capable of bouncing back.
Having these extra factors to consider will encourage people to diversify their agriculture and maybe even enter niches, such as buying large quantities of SF berries in a bet that they're eventually gonna be a week's special demand.

Licea also made an interesting point: pots, machines, war gears and so on are no longer sold. This also means that money has few uses beyond paying upkeep. I believe this is a matter that has to do with industrialisation. Once a nation has become industrialized, it has no more need to import these items because it can make them on its own. If a nation is industrialized, why would it spend effort on grinding money to buy gear, when it could spend effort on producing the gear, also bypassing shipping costs and time? This is intertwined by the fact that in Minecraft, you produce a lot more than you can ever consume. Unless you're europe. This means that as you play, your town or nation can amass such a stockpile of resources that it doesn't need to buy any more. Shells and weapons, building materials and tools, spawners and industry, architecture and art, etc. The only consumption ever occuring is shells and weapons because of war. And nations have weapons industrialized to the point of autarky. What is then the point of money? What are you supposed to buy with it?
An interesting and visual example of this stagnation are many town's docks, which were first empty, then vigorously filled with ships , and finally no more space for new ships. These ports then remain with most of the same ships until the end of time as there is no capacity to build more.