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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Lailoken said:
Scalpers ultimately drive down the real market price. At some point sealmasters have to say, "Hey, if our surplus isn't going to the desired destination anyway, why not just raise prices until the 50% we're allowed to sell under-value go to the people we want even if it subsidizes everybody else?
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We're talking about T>market price, and the Tower not being willing to pay at T. That can only happen if nobody is willing to pay T. You can't do anything to fix that since you can't lower prices, and you can't sell any seals whatsoever below T without at least selling something at T first. Or I guess you could sell in pairs, idunno. Point is you can't sell without exploiting the rules.
 
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MMKII said:
On the vote: Will be sleeping soon (coffee doesn't work anymore I guess), ping me with edits for tomorrow morning.

On the economics: AFAICT there is nothing stopping you pricing all your volume at September 15th into Tower Price and Tower Price +1, after spending the previous two weeks buying anything sold at or less than Tower Price. As long as you are able to convert a controlling share of the total market volume to yours, you should win out. The hard work is in actually doing that. If it turns out everyone has pre-arranged contracts extending out for the next 5 years, well... you are the market now, since everything else is effectively booked. Just make seals and pop them off, and sell it on the cheap to undercut. If it turns out that thats not the case, and we have a continuous stream of sales throughout the month.... well, you win out merely by buying everything and reselling. If you spare some effort, no one will ever even know its you thats doing this. You're guaranteed to be able to make some returns, because theres a guaranteed pile of stuff at the Tower price for you to buy from


The market price is irrelevant. If its lower than the Tower price, then you just buy it all up.

The sticking point is this immutable tower price. You just dance your strategy around how people price their goods relative to the tower price with the understanding that half of their goods will be priced at this price anyway. If they want to sell to a particular person they'll do that. If they won't sell to anyone but one person, they aren't even in the market, not really. If they're willing to sell to you, or to someone random who isn't you, you can game this anyway (catspaws).

I'm like, fairly sure that this sort of thing would work just fine in your standard 14th century marketplace type economic climate.


Hazou had to learn a bunch of math from Kagome and Keiko knows deep and powerful mathemagic (someone probably lost an undergrad stats book somewhere in universe or something).

Noburi is too cool for math, obviously.
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-still missing the point. Run the analysis again where the Tower price is above the market price, but it doesn't purchase at that price and forces everybody to sell half their units at that price if they want to sell anything else below it.

-oh, yeah, and the Tower in this scenario doesn't actually care about the Tower price because they can just tax as many units as they want at zero marginal personal cost.

It's a restriction of supply, but that's not the Tower's primary concern anymore than the economic inefficiency of the merchant council is and exactly matches what we actually observe.
 
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Radvic said:
This is true, but I assume that if someone started colluding with another sealmaster to circumnavigate the tower prices (thus defeating the intent of the law), they'd likely just be told "Stop that, unless you want your license revoked."
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There are so many ways to get around this that I'd assume it's leaking somewhere. You can "bundle" prices, so you sell half at T and the other half at a "discounted" 2P-T. Or you can do a cross-trade with different seals which is "obviously" "for" "good" "reasons". Plus any sealmaster whatsoever is going to be extremely eager to buy any discount seals they can get their hands on, so you'd expect arbitrage to be common.
 
Lailoken said:
-still missing the point. Run the analysis again where the Tower price is above the market price, but it doesn't purchase at that price and forces everybody to sell half their units at that price if they want to sell anything else below it.
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Except I'm not? I don't think your mental model of what we're suggesting here is accurate.
-oh, yeah, and the Tower in this scenario doesn't actually care about the Tower price because they can just tax as many units as they want at zero marginal personal cost.
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Good, because neither do I!

What the Tower does and doesn't buy is immaterial. If they set the price to 1,000,000$ per seal, and force everyone to sell half of theirs at this price, then you just buy up all the cheap stuff anyway and set half to the tower price and half to "Reasonable price thats large enough for you to make a massive profit." Once you have a controlling interest in the supply, it literally doesn't matter, because this strategy doesn't change the demand. Having the tower price ABOVE fair market value just makes this more annoying in practice, since you need more supply to make a decent profit (the Tower effectively locks out half your assets, and no one will buy them).

(This is all immaterial: The Tower won't do this, because the Tower doesn't give this much of a shit about the price of butter in Cloud or about Hazou's pricing strategies. They get free shit regardless. Kotetsu probably throws a kunai at a board and prices it at whatever number it lands on. You think they're going to defend against actual trading strategies?)

As far as all of the other sellers in this strategy are concerned: You are buying their seals. Someone is buying their seals! They get their money! They have no cause to complain.

If you do this the smart way, they don't even know it was you, and you have all the availability! (Get 100 clanless ninja or allied clanned ninja to buy everything in sight, split profits 50% for you, 50% for them evenly distributed based on volume they contribute)

This just price gouges the shit out of everyone else by as little as a dollar or as much as "Whatever they're still willing to pay"


Radvic said:
@MMKII
Any chance you could change:


to
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Yeah sure.
 
Oh for FSM's sake.

Fine. No one is allowed to sell any seals whatsoever except to the Tower, at a rate the Tower decides. You may buy seals from the Tower and not from anyone else. They set whatever rates they damn well please and vary it from person to person on a whim.
The Tower is considered to own 30 hours per week of every sealmaster's time. Every week they specify what you will make for them this week. You either supply it, get someone else to make it for you, beg for an easement, go missing-nin, or deal with ANBU for breaking the law. Everyone who is capable of making seals is required to be licensed. Making seals without a license is treason. Having the capacity to make seals but not getting licensed is treason. Going missing-nin when you are a sealmaster is a "Top priority, bring me his skin and if he's still inside it that would be nice, but don't fuss" sort of thing.

There. It's a vastly more ducked up system and therefore far more appropriate for the screwed-up place that MfD was originally conceived of despite my preferences, so you can all object to the world being craps instead of the economics not being what you think of as perfect.

Grr.

...
...
...We probably shouldn't do this. Still, the simplicity is tempting, and it nicely explains the Tower's source of income and gives them a source of power over the clans. And it's more appropriate for a 12th century military dictatorship. And if we assume that the Tower provides high-end reference materials, labs, and other facilities, that would explain why the sealmasters put up with it. (Aside from "because we're the only game in town and we'll wreck you if you buck the system too much.")

Hm.

@OliWhail , @Velorien ? Thoughts?

Kiba said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail

Did the kids learned their arithmetic off memorization tables?
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Offhand, I have no idea. I can talk with the others about it tomorrow. May I ask why you're asking?


EDIT:
 
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Is there something we can do about having plan links in the tallies? Getting kinda tired of typing in "site:[this thread] [plan name]" into google, which doesn't even work half the time :(

Until I find the other plans, my vote's for
[] Action Plan: Corner Stone
 
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eaglejarl said:
Oh for FSM's sake.

Fine. No one is allowed to sell any seals whatsoever except to the Tower, at a rate the Tower decides. You may buy seals from the Tower and not from anyone else. They set whatever rates they damn well please and vary it from person to person on a whim.
The Tower is considered to own 30 hours per week of every sealmaster's time. Every week they specify what you will make for them this week. You either supply it, get someone else to make it for you, beg for an easement, go missing-nin, or deal with ANBU for breaking the law. Everyone who is capable of making seals is required to be licensed. Making seals without a license is treason. Having the capacity to make seals but not getting licensed is treason. Going missing-nin when you are a sealmaster is a "Top priority, bring me his skin and if he's still inside it that would be nice, but don't fuss" sort of thing.

There. It's a vastly more ducked up system and therefore far more appropriate for the screwed-up place that MfD was originally conceived of despite my preferences, so you can all object to the world being craps instead of the economics not being what you think of as perfect.

Grr.

...
...
...We probably shouldn't do this. Still, the simplicity is tempting, and it nicely explains the Tower's source of income and gives them a source of power over the clans. And it's more appropriate for a 12th century military dictatorship. And if we assume that the Tower provides high-end reference materials, labs, and other facilities, that would explain why the sealmasters put up with it. (Aside from "because we're the only game in town and we'll wreck you if you buck the system too much.")

Hm.
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With respect to the original system:

Actually, after some chit chatting (and I'm not shitting you here) I'm pretty sure the answer is "If it works as intended, and someone else is already gameing the system (as they should be) then the optimal strategy is just to sell stuff like an honest salesman" or something close enough to that that it doesnt make any meaningful difference.

To be clear, this wasn't us complaining about your fictional economics. I think we were all mostly arguing with each other.
 
TelosArrangement said:
Is there something we can do about having plan links in the tallies? Getting kinda tired of typing in "site:[this thread] [plan name]" into google, which doesn't even work half the time :(

Until I find the other plans, my vote's for
[X] Action Plan: Corner Stone
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Click the first person's name who voted for it.
Adhoc vote count started by Vecht on Sep 12, 2018 at 1:48 AM, finished with 585 posts and 17 votes.
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TelosArrangement said:
Is there something we can do about having plan links in the tallies? Getting kinda tired of typing in "site:[this thread] [plan name]" into google, which doesn't even work half the time :(

Until I find the other plans, my vote's for
[X] Action Plan: Corner Stone
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If you click on the first name below each plan, it takes you to the plan.

E: :ninja:
 
[X] Action Plan: That Very Same Day

. .

(As an aside, does anyone know how to insert lines automatically?)

Anyway, y'all are looking at this fancy pants economics tinkerin' way way way too fuckin' complicated-like. Listen here. It's simple. If'n ya don't do this, Zabuza will pull a Samara, and Samehada will cleave ya in half from yer screen right there.
 
eaglejarl said:
Fine. No one is allowed to sell any seals whatsoever except to the Tower, at a rate the Tower decides. You may buy seals from the Tower and not from anyone else. They set whatever rates they damn well please and vary it from person to person on a whim.
The Tower is considered to own 30 hours per week of every sealmaster's time. Every week they specify what you will make for them this week. You either supply it, get someone else to make it for you, beg for an easement, go missing-nin, or deal with ANBU for breaking the law. Everyone who is capable of making seals is required to be licensed. Making seals without a license is treason. Having the capacity to make seals but not getting licensed is treason. Going missing-nin when you are a sealmaster is a "Top priority, bring me his skin and if he's still inside it that would be nice, but don't fuss" sort of thing.

There. It's a vastly more ducked up system and therefore far more appropriate for the screwed-up place that MfD was originally conceived of despite my preferences, so you can all object to the world being craps instead of the economics not being what you think of as perfect.

Grr.

...
...
...We probably shouldn't do this. Still, the simplicity is tempting, and it nicely explains the Tower's source of income and gives them a source of power over the clans. And it's more appropriate for a 12th century military dictatorship. And if we assume that the Tower provides high-end reference materials, labs, and other facilities, that would explain why the sealmasters put up with it. (Aside from "because we're the only game in town and we'll wreck you if you buck the system too much.")

Hm.
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One simple way to fix it is that the above is the threat if people start exploiting the system, and so people tend not to exploit the system because they like their (mildly limited) freedom.

I also think it's worth noting that I think the majority of the exploits (with the notable exception of collusion) don't work nearly as well as the posting history would suggest. Personally, I don't see a significant problem from a narrative perspective with just leaving things as is, and if the thread looks too much into it, having them be told "obey the spirit of the license."
 
Dissonance said:
Anyway, y'all are looking at this fancy pants economics tinkerin' way way way too fuckin' complicated-like. Listen here. It's simple. If'n ya don't do this, Zabuza will pull a Samara, and Samehada will cleave ya in half from yer screen right there
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Ya I reckon that there is reason enough to let things lie.

Radvic said:
One simple way to fix it is that the above is the threat if people start exploiting the system, and so people tend not to exploit the system because they like their (mildly limited) freedom.

I also think it's worth noting that I think the majority of the exploits (with the notable exception of collusion) don't work nearly as well as the posting history would suggest. Personally, I don't see a significant problem from a narrative perspective with just leaving things as is, and if the thread looks too much into it, having them be told "obey the spirit of the license."
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Basically this.

"Why does no one game the seal market, Jiraiya?" Hazou said with innocent curiousity.

"Because here there be dragons, kid." Jiraiya said with a fearful look in his eye.
 
Kiba said:
@eaglejarl Please don't do this to us? I already argued against exploiting the system like this.
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Dunno, amigo. When I originally wrote it, it was intended as a not-so-passive-passive-aggressive joke. The more I think about it, though....

Don't worry, at least one of @Velorien and/or @OliWhail would need to sign off in order for it to become true. Velorien will probably see it first, and he's such a nice guy that I'm sure he will tell me that I'm a bad, bad person for suggesting such a thing. I doubt it will appeal to him at all to create such horror. Nope, not even a little bit. Not one jot or tittle. Nope.
 
eaglejarl said:
Velorien will probably see it first, and he's such a nice guy that I'm sure he will tell me that I'm a bad, bad person for suggesting such a thing. I doubt it will appeal to him at all to create such horror. Nope, not even a little bit. Not one jot or tittle. Nope.
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Oh good, you had me worried.
 
eaglejarl said:
Oh for FSM's sake.

Fine. No one is allowed to sell any seals whatsoever except to the Tower, at a rate the Tower decides. You may buy seals from the Tower and not from anyone else. They set whatever rates they damn well please and vary it from person to person on a whim.
The Tower is considered to own 30 hours per week of every sealmaster's time. Every week they specify what you will make for them this week. You either supply it, get someone else to make it for you, beg for an easement, go missing-nin, or deal with ANBU for breaking the law. Everyone who is capable of making seals is required to be licensed. Making seals without a license is treason. Having the capacity to make seals but not getting licensed is treason. Going missing-nin when you are a sealmaster is a "Top priority, bring me his skin and if he's still inside it that would be nice, but don't fuss" sort of thing.

There. It's a vastly more ducked up system and therefore far more appropriate for the screwed-up place that MfD was originally conceived of despite my preferences, so you can all object to the world being craps instead of the economics not being what you think of as perfect.

Grr.

...
...
...We probably shouldn't do this. Still, the simplicity is tempting, and it nicely explains the Tower's source of income and gives them a source of power over the clans. And it's more appropriate for a 12th century military dictatorship. And if we assume that the Tower provides high-end reference materials, labs, and other facilities, that would explain why the sealmasters put up with it. (Aside from "because we're the only game in town and we'll wreck you if you buck the system too much.")

Hm.

@OliWhail , @Velorien ? Thoughts?
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I think the better option is to just... not engage with this. Just say "No, neither you nor anyone else can abuse arbirtrage for seals for reasons we aren't arsed to come up with. You're welcome to come up with reasons. If we feel particularly nice we might even canonize them. Don't bother us about it."
 
Eh, for what its worth I think (if we were so inclined) that it would be much easier to break a system where the Tower had full control. That merely takes some collusion and bribery. Dealing with a bunch of economically competing clans and their pricing strategies and whatnot OTOH would be fairly problematic if we assumed they would do as we did and would try to counter people doing that etc. The only recourse (at least as I see it) in that situation would be to just sell the damn seals.
 
Also, CCNJ:

Punishing us in-story for engaging with the economics of the quest by dodectupling (30 hours a week = 120 a month, versus 10 hours a month) our in-character workload is a very good way to discourage us from engaging with the story in other ways.

I absolutely understand that the "but it couldn't be that way!" kind of tantrum is frustrating, but I don't think this is the ideal response.

We are, I am sure, perfectly willing to leverage our brainpower to give you an appropriate stricture on the sale of seals, if you'd like to provide in a few lines what the purpose of them is to be.
 
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