It's not restricted by, coincidences, rather than by a lack of them. What I'm trying to say is that the village system is young, obviously flowed, and really, really unstable. Unstable enough that no one had a chance to overhaul the economy, even if ideas to do things more efficiently are mostly simple.You have to be a bit lucky to survive change.
Yeah, but that really doesn't jive with the idea that ninja are involved in commerce, and civilian activity is important enough to have continental ramifications.
@MrCogmor I'm not convinced your idea solves the fundamental problems. It presumes a lot of stuff that seems hard to justify.
You claim a "quality assurance law" come into play over a fairly short timespan when the ninja are busy playing with each other. This begs the question of why such a thing would exist: it certainly doesn't seem that people would naturally regulate to this extent when society is so decentralised, nor does it seem enforceable. It presumes ninja are less reliant on civilians during war, but surely this is the other way around: during war ninja will be doubling down on debt, buying what they can and Getting Rich Quick (so they can get back to pew-pewing each other). If civilians start restricting trade at this point in time, they'll get shut down with a bloodied fist faster than they can blink.
You suggest at the end of war ninja suddenly find they can't get licences lest the issuers be outcompeted, but this is the same issue that we had originally, just phrased differently. I doubt this would work any better in practice. If those giving the licenses were those doing the regulation, the issue would be endemic (and not ninja-specific), and there would be even less hope for a Merchant Council to spontaneously appear. If it's not endemic, then what would their motive be in denying nearly all ninja trade, and where would their power come from?
There is a significant power issue here, where civilians simply can't enforce this without being willing to take (potentially severe) losses. This doesn't make sense if the Council is just some somewhat out-of-control bureaucracy. Your defences about why ninja wouldn't break it assume that ninja
communities would be supportive of it: ninja are psychotic village-loving freaks, and if their village portrays the Council as unfair extortion, which is basically true with what you're proposing, they're not going to be siding with the merchants. On top of that you assume civilians won't want ninja labour, which is weird: there
will be a black market, and civilian ignorance of jutsū boils down to "pretty sure they can do anything".
