Canon.
Also, Jiraiya never exhibited behaviors of wasteful spending in MfD, although he could get away with a lot.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
Canon.
Also, Jiraiya never exhibited behaviors of wasteful spending in MfD, although he could get away with a lot.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
Fair. The only thing I can point to here is the clan compound itself, but that would probably be circular logic.
- Location
- Liverpool
Inserted tally
Nice Grim Patron impression faf
It is Friday evening (or at least it is my time, you didn't specify).
Everyone! Remember, we get extra XP for sufficient quantities of votes on this update, so please vote if you're neutral or better to a plan! Also, while sealing economy and general economy stuff is being sorted out, plan input and crafting is still a thing we should do and polish before tomorrow, right?
Nice Grim Patron impression faf
It is Friday evening (or at least it is my time, you didn't specify).
Everyone! Remember, we get extra XP for sufficient quantities of votes on this update, so please vote if you're neutral or better to a plan! Also, while sealing economy and general economy stuff is being sorted out, plan input and crafting is still a thing we should do and polish before tomorrow, right?
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Is there a quick way to count unique?
I don't see your name in the tally?
I don't see your name in the tally?
- Location
- Italy
Until we learn Shadow Clones, then all bets are off
Also
[x] Action Plan: "More Like a Cobweb, Really"
- Location
- NY
[x] Action Plan: "More Like a Cobweb, Really"
Rihaku
The Internet
Some back of envelope calculations:
Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that Fire had a total population of about 300,000. Assuming productivity per capita somewhere around 1790s America (pop. 4 million, GDP ~4.568 billion in 2018 USD), GDP of Fire should be around 380 million in 2018 USD. Let's round down to 300 million USD; there are a number of factors, both positive and negative, differentiating Fire from our sample set but the balance should skew moderately to the negative.
Military expenditure as % of GDP was typically between 10-25% for a major military power of the era. In modern times we tend to spend less than 10% of the GDP on defense, non-US countries much less. The totally mobilized economics of WWII ranged as high as 50%, whereas the Napoleonic Wars saw around 25%. Leaf is not on a total war footing but is a major military power with numerous rival belligerents so let's go with 20% for now.
60 million dollars of military budget, aggregate personnel costs typically account for 40% of that, we'll bump it up to 60% since ninja are extremely reliant on experts with the top tier representing the majority of an entire nation's firepower. That leaves 40% of the budget (24 million) to be spent on equipment & other expenses. Ninjas don't use large warships or cannon, equipment loadouts are personal-scale and typically consist of:
Rations (incl. in personnel costs)
Clothing, shoes, etc (low- to medium-skilled labor + cheap to moderate raw materials cost)
Kunai, Shurikens, Ninja Wire (medium- to high-skilled labor + moderate to high raw materials cost)
Seals & Medical Pills (expert labor + moderate raw materials cost)
Chakra Conductive Weaponry & Possibly Armor (expert labor + high raw materials cost)
With the latter two typically reserved for the higher echelons of ninja. Chakra Steel seems to be rare enough that only Asuma possesses such weaponry, so Seals & Medical Pills are the only means, besides basic outfitting & long-term education, for wealth to be directly converted into military power. Storage seals allow combatants to carry vastly larger quantities of specialized equipment and supplies, increasing logistical reach and versatility in battle. Explosive tags provide a semi-scaling source of AoE ranged damage that does not draw upon one's chakra pool, effectively increasing one's total chakra by "X" so long as "X" is spent on offensive purposes. Skywalkers have enormous implications for reconnaissance, ambush, disengagement, logistics (esp. in traversing hostile terrain), in-combat creative use, etc. Each Seal a ninja carries can effectively be thought of as an extra Jutsu the ninja did not have to spend XP to learn or chakra to power. The effective value of such Jutsus can easily be in the thousands of XP for a fully-loaded jounin kit.
However, Sealing is extremely dangerous, an enormous time commitment, and requires a level of abstract intelligence multiple standard deviations above even the ninja mean. The supply of sealmasters is extremely low and one has to account for (and subsidize, if one wishes to stay on the cutting edge of seal technology) their time spent on R&D, training, active duty and other activities. This is somewhat but not entirely offset by the relatively low material costs of seals.
Given the assumptions laid out above (that Sealing / Medical Pills are the primary direct ways to quickly convert budget into fighting strength), I think it's safe to assume each represents a large plurality, but not a majority, of the non-personnel budget. Say 30-45% each, 60-90% in aggregate. Skywalkers having disrupted the paradigm, Seals may be worth a bit more.
If the state Sealing budget is 50% of 24 million, that gives about 12 million modern USD of budget to spend on seals per year. Assuming a jounin : chunin : genin individual pay ratio of 10 : 3 : 1, and assuming there are 3 jounin, 7 chunin, and 20 genin sealmasters, one year's output should be on the order of:
Jounin - 1.68 million modern USD / year
Chunin - 507,000 modern USD / year
Genin - 169,000 modern USD / year
Medics should see similar but moderately lower compensation.
Note that this is in the context of an economy that only generates $380 million of value each year. What does this mean?
-Mean per capita GDP is $1,000 / year; median is probably $750. Total expenses for a family of 4 should not exceed $3000 / year.
-Given a personnel budget of $36 million and a pre-BotG ninja population of 30 jounin, 240 chunin and 1200 genin, average (non-med, non-sealing) ninja compensation should be on the order of:
Jounin - 162,000 modern USD / year
Chunin - 54,000 modern USD / year
Genin - 17,000 modern USD / year
-This means that a genin can support up to 23 non-productive civilians by himself, seems about right.
-Post-BotG, median Jounin pay will go up due to constricted supply, unless Naruto takes all the missions in which case prices will go drastically down. Naruto could wage economic war on any clan by underbidding all their missions.
-For purposes of buying actual goods besides staple foods, you can use your economic intuitions as-is, since we converted to modern dollars. Their society simply doesn't make that much stuff.
-For purposes of buying labor, including bribery, assuming a ninja works 200 days per year, cost shakes out to the following: jounin $810 / day, chunin $270 / day, genin $90 / day, peasant $1-3 / day. It makes sense to hire a genin squad ($270) to clear your fields (1 family's fields = $3000 of income / year) of monsters if you only have to do so once or twice per year, but only the wealthy would be able to do so to babysit their cat. Productivity is low so labor is cheap, but experts are still expensive. A Sealmaster is able to sponsor many times his personal output's worth in shinobi labor.
---
There are a number of imperfections in this analysis, chief among them the reliance on a historical budget-based rather than supply/demand-curve based analysis of military expenditures. The latter was determined too difficult to work given the number of unknown variables involved; given background assumptions shown in the text, we know that demand for combat-effective seals far outstrips supply, but not the exact proportions involved. Using empirical historical percentages sidesteps all of that and consolidates some assumptions (in both cases the state has monopsony power over strategic-scale purchase of armaments, but must contend with rivals that are seeking to incentivize internal arms production, in both cases the state is primarily agrarian with specialized urban enclaves of no more than ~30,000 people, etc). The analysis does not capture seals created for private use.
As demand for seals outstrips supply and supply is mediated by the state, you will see effects similar to those exerted by command economies on high-demand objects: "breadlines," rationing, bribery and black markets to circumvent the former, and so on. If anything, the stakes are higher: treason may be death, but falling in battle is also death, and no sane organization can afford to execute its jounin over something like that, much less its jounin sealmasters. Further, any society which did tolerate such a black market would find its shinobi better equipped and thus more effective than their competitors.
Please note that GDP does not equal wealth; total wealth of Fire Country is likely to be 20x - 50x of annual GDP. Sealing is an incredibly lucrative profession as befits its enormous utility and severely constrained supply, but even jounin Sealmasters command incomes an order of magnitude less than the great lords of the realm, with the accumulated wealth of the latter being likely two orders of magnitude higher than that. A mighty clan like the Hyuuga might control 3-5% of national GDP representing 15-20 million USD / year of income (though much of this will be consumed maintaining their power and estates), with accumulated assets (95+% illiquid) of 200+ million USD, on top of their income from ninja missions.
Also, just because the average price of a Jounin's day is $810 does not mean you will be able to purchase such en masse; severely limited supply (only 10-30 jounin in the village) means extreme 'slippage' for each marginal purchase.
With that said here is my Grand Consolidated List of Prices:
Assuming 10 Ryo = $1 (2019)
Sealmaster Labor @ 200 days / year
Jounin: 16.8 million ryo / year; 84,000 ryo / day; 1 seal @ 60 seals / day = 1,400 ryo
Chunin: 5.07 million ryo / year; 25,350 ryo / day; 1 seal @ 60 seals / day = 422.5 ryo
Genin: 1.69 million ryo / year; 8,450 ryo / day; 1 seal @ 60 seals / day = 140 ryo
Shinobi/Kunoichi Labor @ 200 days / year
Jounin: 1.62 million ryo / year; 8100 ryo / day
Chunin: 540,000 ryo / year; 2500 ryo / day
Genin: 170,000 ryo / year; 900 ryo / day
Assuming shinobi spend 150 days / year on downtime, training, mentoring, leisure, etc. Mednin should be between these two figures, as medical ninjutsu requires similar levels of talent but has a lower attrition rate than Sealing. Bribing a ninja for any (non-illegal, reasonable) task should rarely take more than 10-100,000 ryo; bribing a sealmaster would cost 100,000-1,000,000 ryo, and bribing a Great Clan 1,000,000 - 10,000,000 ryo. Illegal tasks probably command a 3x to 5x premium.
Common Labor @ 250 days / year
Skilled Craftsperson: 100,000 ryo / year; 400 ryo / day
Craftsperson: 30,000 ryo / year; 120 ryo / day
Pleb: 7,500 ryo / year; 30 ryo / day
350 days / year might be more realistic for plebs.
Any Crafted Object Within Tech Level
Price in 2019 USD x 10 = Price in Ryo
Examples:
Low Quality Kunai = 10 USD = 100 ryo
High Quality Kunai = 50 USD = 500 ryo
High Quality Sword = 1500 USD = 15,000 ryo
Food
Staple Foods: Price in 2019 USD x 2 = Price in Ryo
Other Foods: Price in 2019 USD x 10 = Price in Ryo
Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that Fire had a total population of about 300,000. Assuming productivity per capita somewhere around 1790s America (pop. 4 million, GDP ~4.568 billion in 2018 USD), GDP of Fire should be around 380 million in 2018 USD. Let's round down to 300 million USD; there are a number of factors, both positive and negative, differentiating Fire from our sample set but the balance should skew moderately to the negative.
Military expenditure as % of GDP was typically between 10-25% for a major military power of the era. In modern times we tend to spend less than 10% of the GDP on defense, non-US countries much less. The totally mobilized economics of WWII ranged as high as 50%, whereas the Napoleonic Wars saw around 25%. Leaf is not on a total war footing but is a major military power with numerous rival belligerents so let's go with 20% for now.
60 million dollars of military budget, aggregate personnel costs typically account for 40% of that, we'll bump it up to 60% since ninja are extremely reliant on experts with the top tier representing the majority of an entire nation's firepower. That leaves 40% of the budget (24 million) to be spent on equipment & other expenses. Ninjas don't use large warships or cannon, equipment loadouts are personal-scale and typically consist of:
Rations (incl. in personnel costs)
Clothing, shoes, etc (low- to medium-skilled labor + cheap to moderate raw materials cost)
Kunai, Shurikens, Ninja Wire (medium- to high-skilled labor + moderate to high raw materials cost)
Seals & Medical Pills (expert labor + moderate raw materials cost)
Chakra Conductive Weaponry & Possibly Armor (expert labor + high raw materials cost)
With the latter two typically reserved for the higher echelons of ninja. Chakra Steel seems to be rare enough that only Asuma possesses such weaponry, so Seals & Medical Pills are the only means, besides basic outfitting & long-term education, for wealth to be directly converted into military power. Storage seals allow combatants to carry vastly larger quantities of specialized equipment and supplies, increasing logistical reach and versatility in battle. Explosive tags provide a semi-scaling source of AoE ranged damage that does not draw upon one's chakra pool, effectively increasing one's total chakra by "X" so long as "X" is spent on offensive purposes. Skywalkers have enormous implications for reconnaissance, ambush, disengagement, logistics (esp. in traversing hostile terrain), in-combat creative use, etc. Each Seal a ninja carries can effectively be thought of as an extra Jutsu the ninja did not have to spend XP to learn or chakra to power. The effective value of such Jutsus can easily be in the thousands of XP for a fully-loaded jounin kit.
However, Sealing is extremely dangerous, an enormous time commitment, and requires a level of abstract intelligence multiple standard deviations above even the ninja mean. The supply of sealmasters is extremely low and one has to account for (and subsidize, if one wishes to stay on the cutting edge of seal technology) their time spent on R&D, training, active duty and other activities. This is somewhat but not entirely offset by the relatively low material costs of seals.
Given the assumptions laid out above (that Sealing / Medical Pills are the primary direct ways to quickly convert budget into fighting strength), I think it's safe to assume each represents a large plurality, but not a majority, of the non-personnel budget. Say 30-45% each, 60-90% in aggregate. Skywalkers having disrupted the paradigm, Seals may be worth a bit more.
If the state Sealing budget is 50% of 24 million, that gives about 12 million modern USD of budget to spend on seals per year. Assuming a jounin : chunin : genin individual pay ratio of 10 : 3 : 1, and assuming there are 3 jounin, 7 chunin, and 20 genin sealmasters, one year's output should be on the order of:
Jounin - 1.68 million modern USD / year
Chunin - 507,000 modern USD / year
Genin - 169,000 modern USD / year
Medics should see similar but moderately lower compensation.
Note that this is in the context of an economy that only generates $380 million of value each year. What does this mean?
-Mean per capita GDP is $1,000 / year; median is probably $750. Total expenses for a family of 4 should not exceed $3000 / year.
-Given a personnel budget of $36 million and a pre-BotG ninja population of 30 jounin, 240 chunin and 1200 genin, average (non-med, non-sealing) ninja compensation should be on the order of:
Jounin - 162,000 modern USD / year
Chunin - 54,000 modern USD / year
Genin - 17,000 modern USD / year
-This means that a genin can support up to 23 non-productive civilians by himself, seems about right.
-Post-BotG, median Jounin pay will go up due to constricted supply, unless Naruto takes all the missions in which case prices will go drastically down. Naruto could wage economic war on any clan by underbidding all their missions.
-For purposes of buying actual goods besides staple foods, you can use your economic intuitions as-is, since we converted to modern dollars. Their society simply doesn't make that much stuff.
-For purposes of buying labor, including bribery, assuming a ninja works 200 days per year, cost shakes out to the following: jounin $810 / day, chunin $270 / day, genin $90 / day, peasant $1-3 / day. It makes sense to hire a genin squad ($270) to clear your fields (1 family's fields = $3000 of income / year) of monsters if you only have to do so once or twice per year, but only the wealthy would be able to do so to babysit their cat. Productivity is low so labor is cheap, but experts are still expensive. A Sealmaster is able to sponsor many times his personal output's worth in shinobi labor.
---
There are a number of imperfections in this analysis, chief among them the reliance on a historical budget-based rather than supply/demand-curve based analysis of military expenditures. The latter was determined too difficult to work given the number of unknown variables involved; given background assumptions shown in the text, we know that demand for combat-effective seals far outstrips supply, but not the exact proportions involved. Using empirical historical percentages sidesteps all of that and consolidates some assumptions (in both cases the state has monopsony power over strategic-scale purchase of armaments, but must contend with rivals that are seeking to incentivize internal arms production, in both cases the state is primarily agrarian with specialized urban enclaves of no more than ~30,000 people, etc). The analysis does not capture seals created for private use.
As demand for seals outstrips supply and supply is mediated by the state, you will see effects similar to those exerted by command economies on high-demand objects: "breadlines," rationing, bribery and black markets to circumvent the former, and so on. If anything, the stakes are higher: treason may be death, but falling in battle is also death, and no sane organization can afford to execute its jounin over something like that, much less its jounin sealmasters. Further, any society which did tolerate such a black market would find its shinobi better equipped and thus more effective than their competitors.
Please note that GDP does not equal wealth; total wealth of Fire Country is likely to be 20x - 50x of annual GDP. Sealing is an incredibly lucrative profession as befits its enormous utility and severely constrained supply, but even jounin Sealmasters command incomes an order of magnitude less than the great lords of the realm, with the accumulated wealth of the latter being likely two orders of magnitude higher than that. A mighty clan like the Hyuuga might control 3-5% of national GDP representing 15-20 million USD / year of income (though much of this will be consumed maintaining their power and estates), with accumulated assets (95+% illiquid) of 200+ million USD, on top of their income from ninja missions.
Also, just because the average price of a Jounin's day is $810 does not mean you will be able to purchase such en masse; severely limited supply (only 10-30 jounin in the village) means extreme 'slippage' for each marginal purchase.
With that said here is my Grand Consolidated List of Prices:
Assuming 10 Ryo = $1 (2019)
Sealmaster Labor @ 200 days / year
Jounin: 16.8 million ryo / year; 84,000 ryo / day; 1 seal @ 60 seals / day = 1,400 ryo
Chunin: 5.07 million ryo / year; 25,350 ryo / day; 1 seal @ 60 seals / day = 422.5 ryo
Genin: 1.69 million ryo / year; 8,450 ryo / day; 1 seal @ 60 seals / day = 140 ryo
Shinobi/Kunoichi Labor @ 200 days / year
Jounin: 1.62 million ryo / year; 8100 ryo / day
Chunin: 540,000 ryo / year; 2500 ryo / day
Genin: 170,000 ryo / year; 900 ryo / day
Assuming shinobi spend 150 days / year on downtime, training, mentoring, leisure, etc. Mednin should be between these two figures, as medical ninjutsu requires similar levels of talent but has a lower attrition rate than Sealing. Bribing a ninja for any (non-illegal, reasonable) task should rarely take more than 10-100,000 ryo; bribing a sealmaster would cost 100,000-1,000,000 ryo, and bribing a Great Clan 1,000,000 - 10,000,000 ryo. Illegal tasks probably command a 3x to 5x premium.
Common Labor @ 250 days / year
Skilled Craftsperson: 100,000 ryo / year; 400 ryo / day
Craftsperson: 30,000 ryo / year; 120 ryo / day
Pleb: 7,500 ryo / year; 30 ryo / day
350 days / year might be more realistic for plebs.
Any Crafted Object Within Tech Level
Price in 2019 USD x 10 = Price in Ryo
Examples:
Low Quality Kunai = 10 USD = 100 ryo
High Quality Kunai = 50 USD = 500 ryo
High Quality Sword = 1500 USD = 15,000 ryo
Food
Staple Foods: Price in 2019 USD x 2 = Price in Ryo
Other Foods: Price in 2019 USD x 10 = Price in Ryo
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- Location
- Liverpool
Depending on your definition of quick? By hand. And sorry, I had only just got caught up, fastest way to read the plans was after I posted the tally.
[X] Action plan: the clan strikes back
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Hey, that's really neat. I hope we have a good turnout this time.
Did you know we've also had 92 unique voters in the last 50 chapters alone? They include:
faflec, Deathbybunnies, Aodyssey, MrCogmor, Esryok, MMKII, Halberdier, Pharos, Immortal Lurker, BG-Scout, Shadowwarp, LeMat, Damian45, ting, Mafferfew, AlphaDelta, Lord Marshal, TalonofAnathrax, nevereatcars, JulieK, Enjou, Sentient Tree, Tua, Rafin, fiirofa, ContextBot, Asquil, TaliesinSkye, TarzanNn, Inferno Vulpix, Kiba, huhYeahGoodPoint, firestorm440, Noumero, Vecht, Raichu1972, Insertion, 18scsc, Twinnstars, QTesseract, Torpling, Oneiros, MadScientist, Solonarv, Cariyaga, Dissonance, traverseda, Paperclipped, Adad64, Shard, PurposefulZephyr, Roomba, Traiden, Jello_Raptor, Dictator4Hire, Orisha91, Anderkent, elpachosan, Sampatrick, Evenstar, The king Chad, ChairAgainstWall, Langevin, Anderein, Mizu, jy3, Citrus, W.D Gaster, 1234qwerty, Megacookie, Fresh C, Malevolo, Waffle, Radvic, KaGoGoGadgetMe, Briefvoice, charlesrwest, Lailoken, Walter, eaglejarl, Ishtar, Icehawk78, Roadie, will408914, Kurkistan, Kalkin, Korporati, dakem, Raxner, anonym009, Rhodes, ashinator, and Gamerlord
That's quite a lot of people.
Seems like a safe enough plan with few failure modes considering we're just talking to our clan-mates inside of our clan compound. Good enough to earn my vote.
[x] Action Plan: "More Like a Cobweb, Really"
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Apparently this counts as tagging me for alerts, oddly.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Very impressive work. I won't offer detailed feedback as I am on the verge of falling asleep, but I note that the MfD tech level, before factoring in ninja, is based on 12th century Japan, putting it a long way from early industrial era. Also mostly no soldier pills (they've been alluded to, but are not in general use).
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
NARUTO: ^_^ !
Rihaku
The Internet
Yup, 1790 US real GDP per capita is actually lower than 1280 Song Dynasty China (the closest in-time correlate to Kamakura Era Japan that I have good data for), and only twice that of Han Dynasty China or Rome.
1790 US - $1000 GDP per capita
1280 Song Dynasty - $2220 GDP per capita
200 Han Dynasty - $480 GDP per capita
Industrialization would eventually 10x - 100x those numbers, but 1790s US was still 98%+ agrarian.
If Sealmasters have no competition from mednin in producing combat-effective equipment, their percentage of the equipment budget would likely increase to ~80%, given this would still not be enough to fulfill demand, the society would capture all spare wealth within the sector and convert it into higher sealcraft production. You might see Sealmasters work more days per year or longer periods per day but with a 60% pay raise compared to the numbers in my chart.
I can see GDP per capita being anywhere from .6 to 2x my median prediction, but it's an easy fix for the chart, just multiply all the labor costs by the adjusting factor.
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Rihaku
The Internet
Arable land is worth a multiplier of its annual output less the cost of working the land (10x - 100x depending on the risk premium of the society in question). Urban land is worth what the rich will pay for it, or a multiplier of its annual rents adjusted for expected appreciation. For reference, in London in the 1400s a merchant's home within the city would cost about about USD $1500-2000 per year (15,000 - 20,000 ryo).
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
That sort seal rarity/production analysis is what created the merchant council.
We live in Leaf, the most populated city in the EN, at 30,000 people, and bought a dilapidated(Snek Uncle's biohorror research laboratory) compound that could house future 100-200 clan members provided that it's renovated.
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