Espoir thoughts
- Location
- USA
So, for a while now, I've sort of pondered the profitability of the Espoir venture, from the Blacksuit's point of view. With us having reached the end of its arc, it seems like a reasonable time to talk it over with the thread.
First off, bullet bit, this is a 'airplane on a treadmill' kind of debate. The real answer to 'how much money you make when you tell a hundred guys that hate you where and when you will be doing crimes' is 'jail'. We are firmly in the heightened reality of this manga, and therefore our answer is going to be wholly dependent on how much consideration we do of Real World constraints vs Manga Nonsense constraints.
So, that said, let's talk about what running the Espoir entails.
Before:
'Debt' of a hundred penniless men
A billion yen in cash
A bigass crime boat
After:
'Debt++' of whoever couldn't pay off their Espoir loan (most people, presumably, since the interest rate is nonsense)
Whatever cash is left over
Same bigass crime boat
The bodies of the guys that didn't get 3 stars
So, insofar as we are a business, wanting to show a profit, that's what we are working with. We get a hundred guys to show up, put them on our boat, give them some percentage of a giant table full of cash, and then they play our death game. When that's over, a little boat takes away the ones who got 3 stars, old debts cleared, and they are issued their new debts and life goes on.
We are assuming that the Blacksuits are fairplay crooks, as ridiculous as that is, and that if the worst happens, they just let it happen. So you could have a scenario where all 103 debtors borrowed 10 million, gave it to one guy, then killed their cards via draws before interest could mount. In that scenario, Blacksuit inc would be out the 1 billion, and out the original debts, while each debtors would owe 10 million.
On paper, this is probably fine, since their debts have ballooned hugely, that covers the outlay of the billion, but off paper that's obvious nonsense. Kaiji owing 3 million and Kaiji owing 10 million are pretty similarly worthless, but that was real money that walked out the door. Blacksuits are exposed on this whole deal.
Okabayashi mentioned that his original debt was 'too big for the Espoir', which was how he fell in with his gang. That indicates that Teiai is sensitive to the OG debt -> Espoir debt conversion, and makes sure that it stays within certain bounds.
He also mentioned something else that was very interesting. Returners, who comprise a percentage of the playing field, need a 4th star. This is huge.
With a secret minority needing a 4th star, the nightmare scenario of 'all debtors cooperate' is off the table. For every returner with 4, someone else doesn't have 3. You have a minimum slave population at the end of a third of your number of returners.
That is, presumably, the main coverage on your billion yen exposure. It does not take many human trafficking victims to make your money back. The biggest expense in most industries is salary, after all, so if you are swapping in debtors for workers at your front companies your profits go up by the vector between minimum wage that you'd pay a free man vs whatever you pay to keep a company asset in working shape.
So, on the purely financial level, the Espoir's outlay is the money they hand out at the beginning, somewhere between a hundred million (if everyone takes the minimum million), to a billion. The income it brings to the organization is the people who don't get their stars and end up taken away. The income is cut by whatever portion of people use the money to pay off portions of their Espoir debt right then and there, and the outgo is cut by however many of your slaves don't pan out as workers, for whatever reason.
My gut instinct is that, on this level, the Espoir makes sense, and is in fact wildly profitable. About a third of people ended up in the Other Room, hard not to think that withholding their wages makes that table of cash back in short order. The people you lose, the ones who go free and clear, are whatever. They paid their Espoir debt in cash, so that's money from the table you didn't ultimately lose, and, to begin with, your claim against them was never real in any meaningful way.
I further suspect that the above analysis is beside the point. The Espoir making a profit is cool and all, but I think the real main motive is that you launder flimsy debt into copperclad debt. Kaiji is initially on the hook for a debt that Furuhata was the main debtor for, and they were also pursuing him! The idea of them going to court on that is nuts (yes, your honor, that is indeed the interest ra-...why are you laughing? Bailiff, release me!). Suitman talks a big game about going after Kaiji's family, but even in this heightened world I think if you attack a hundred Japanese families they call out the SDF on your ass because you are Godzilla.
But after the Espoir, Kaiji's debt is comparatively firmer. He's signed a contract stating that it is from a gambling event on a certain date, it is notarized, it has his chop, it is as official as such a ridiculous thing can be. While it might still not stand up in court, it at least has the drug dealer's exemption, you know? If you are doing a crime and you cheat your customer, he has to admit to the cops that he's a crook in order to rat you out.
In order to report the Blacksuits, Kaiji has to report that he participated in this event, which is very obviously Crime Time. This is a much better place for Suitman and his bros to be than where they started, where their rationale for why he owed them money was a cosign a year ago for an initial amount that would reveal their deranged interest rate.
(We ignore, once again, that they brand men and that the law takes a dim view on modern slave owners. The Blacksuits are unable to be reported as mafioso due to the bullet we are biting, the worry here is that they are reported as usurers.)
So, ultimately, that's my conclusion. Given the story's premise, that you can operate such a large scale criminal enterprise with folks that hate you, I think the Espoir makes sense. The returner guaranteed star deficit means that they'll have human capital to make up for whatever percentage of their table of money they don't get back. Beyond that, the externality of laundering civilian debt into special Blacksuit debt is another huge plus. I think it is not unreasonable, within the heightened reality that the story is placed, that a crime syndicate would do such a thing.
First off, bullet bit, this is a 'airplane on a treadmill' kind of debate. The real answer to 'how much money you make when you tell a hundred guys that hate you where and when you will be doing crimes' is 'jail'. We are firmly in the heightened reality of this manga, and therefore our answer is going to be wholly dependent on how much consideration we do of Real World constraints vs Manga Nonsense constraints.
So, that said, let's talk about what running the Espoir entails.
Before:
'Debt' of a hundred penniless men
A billion yen in cash
A bigass crime boat
After:
'Debt++' of whoever couldn't pay off their Espoir loan (most people, presumably, since the interest rate is nonsense)
Whatever cash is left over
Same bigass crime boat
The bodies of the guys that didn't get 3 stars
So, insofar as we are a business, wanting to show a profit, that's what we are working with. We get a hundred guys to show up, put them on our boat, give them some percentage of a giant table full of cash, and then they play our death game. When that's over, a little boat takes away the ones who got 3 stars, old debts cleared, and they are issued their new debts and life goes on.
We are assuming that the Blacksuits are fairplay crooks, as ridiculous as that is, and that if the worst happens, they just let it happen. So you could have a scenario where all 103 debtors borrowed 10 million, gave it to one guy, then killed their cards via draws before interest could mount. In that scenario, Blacksuit inc would be out the 1 billion, and out the original debts, while each debtors would owe 10 million.
On paper, this is probably fine, since their debts have ballooned hugely, that covers the outlay of the billion, but off paper that's obvious nonsense. Kaiji owing 3 million and Kaiji owing 10 million are pretty similarly worthless, but that was real money that walked out the door. Blacksuits are exposed on this whole deal.
Okabayashi mentioned that his original debt was 'too big for the Espoir', which was how he fell in with his gang. That indicates that Teiai is sensitive to the OG debt -> Espoir debt conversion, and makes sure that it stays within certain bounds.
He also mentioned something else that was very interesting. Returners, who comprise a percentage of the playing field, need a 4th star. This is huge.
With a secret minority needing a 4th star, the nightmare scenario of 'all debtors cooperate' is off the table. For every returner with 4, someone else doesn't have 3. You have a minimum slave population at the end of a third of your number of returners.
That is, presumably, the main coverage on your billion yen exposure. It does not take many human trafficking victims to make your money back. The biggest expense in most industries is salary, after all, so if you are swapping in debtors for workers at your front companies your profits go up by the vector between minimum wage that you'd pay a free man vs whatever you pay to keep a company asset in working shape.
So, on the purely financial level, the Espoir's outlay is the money they hand out at the beginning, somewhere between a hundred million (if everyone takes the minimum million), to a billion. The income it brings to the organization is the people who don't get their stars and end up taken away. The income is cut by whatever portion of people use the money to pay off portions of their Espoir debt right then and there, and the outgo is cut by however many of your slaves don't pan out as workers, for whatever reason.
My gut instinct is that, on this level, the Espoir makes sense, and is in fact wildly profitable. About a third of people ended up in the Other Room, hard not to think that withholding their wages makes that table of cash back in short order. The people you lose, the ones who go free and clear, are whatever. They paid their Espoir debt in cash, so that's money from the table you didn't ultimately lose, and, to begin with, your claim against them was never real in any meaningful way.
I further suspect that the above analysis is beside the point. The Espoir making a profit is cool and all, but I think the real main motive is that you launder flimsy debt into copperclad debt. Kaiji is initially on the hook for a debt that Furuhata was the main debtor for, and they were also pursuing him! The idea of them going to court on that is nuts (yes, your honor, that is indeed the interest ra-...why are you laughing? Bailiff, release me!). Suitman talks a big game about going after Kaiji's family, but even in this heightened world I think if you attack a hundred Japanese families they call out the SDF on your ass because you are Godzilla.
But after the Espoir, Kaiji's debt is comparatively firmer. He's signed a contract stating that it is from a gambling event on a certain date, it is notarized, it has his chop, it is as official as such a ridiculous thing can be. While it might still not stand up in court, it at least has the drug dealer's exemption, you know? If you are doing a crime and you cheat your customer, he has to admit to the cops that he's a crook in order to rat you out.
In order to report the Blacksuits, Kaiji has to report that he participated in this event, which is very obviously Crime Time. This is a much better place for Suitman and his bros to be than where they started, where their rationale for why he owed them money was a cosign a year ago for an initial amount that would reveal their deranged interest rate.
(We ignore, once again, that they brand men and that the law takes a dim view on modern slave owners. The Blacksuits are unable to be reported as mafioso due to the bullet we are biting, the worry here is that they are reported as usurers.)
So, ultimately, that's my conclusion. Given the story's premise, that you can operate such a large scale criminal enterprise with folks that hate you, I think the Espoir makes sense. The returner guaranteed star deficit means that they'll have human capital to make up for whatever percentage of their table of money they don't get back. Beyond that, the externality of laundering civilian debt into special Blacksuit debt is another huge plus. I think it is not unreasonable, within the heightened reality that the story is placed, that a crime syndicate would do such a thing.