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If you can explain why the number and names of planets are relevant to the gameplay, we can provide you with count/names.
We're developing teleportation and another planet seems like a safe distance from a bunch of these shenanigans.

Let us throw the question back: which types of mines are historically plausible to have existed in 12th century Japan?
If you're asking about mineral deposits it's a difficult comparison, with a chain of volcanic islands for Japan versus a large and ordinary-seeming landmass for the ENs, but we know it was rich in gold and silver. The 12th century was when Sado Island started mining gold, and in the 17th century it was one of the world's largest producers of gold. It was known for significant surface deposits of native gold and argentite in quartz during the Heian period. If you're asking about mining techniques, let me see what I can do. This page suggests panning native gold dust/nuggets was initially the main (or only) method. It suggests that mining gold ore to refine didn't become widespread until the 16th century, but this seems to have been because of political pressure amidst feuding daimyo leading them to increase the production of precious metals for funding, rather than the lack of capacity. Given the differences in the EN, I suspect mining gold ore may have become common earlier.

This page lists a variety of Japanese mines. It's largely modern but includes the opening dates, and sorting through reveals some historical mines that'd have been open around then. The Toi gold mine was opened by the Sumitomo group in 1370 to exploit hydrothermal gold ore deposits, which is close but insufficient. Researching the Taishu (est 699, initially hydrothermal silver deposits, later kaolinite) and Ikuno (est 807, information scanty but plausibly gold, silver, and/or copper) mines might be a try since they're old enough to qualify but apparently not notable enough to have articles like the Toi gold mine does.

EDIT: I found an additional source here. Going through it for details. The short version seems to be that it claims that gold, silver, lead, copper, and sulfur were the main substances of interest in the requested time period, and that the sort of extensive mining operation we would consider a "mine" were rare if not nonexistent before 1596. This is odd given how early Sado Island began producing gold, but I suspect that the paper is considering surface mining techniques such as placer mining or open pits as distinct from underground mining.

So for a TL;DR: My understanding is that 12th century Japan was mostly using surface mining techniques like placer mining (panning and digging in stream beds) or open pits (just dig a big hole, no tunnels or shafts) for the usual suspects of gold, silver, copper, lead, and sulfur, along with whatever misc gemstones can be discovered alongside those.

EDIT 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: I didn't mention iron, but I think people are more generally aware of Japan's historical difficulties sourcing quality iron ore and how/why the Elemental Nations have already been established to differ in that regard.
 
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Pinging @Paperclipped @Velorien

Hazō has never heard of such a thing, although it should be noted that the EN is small (so eclipses would be rare) and record keeping is atrocious.
Lunar eclipses are visible from anywhere on Earth, so long as it's night. So if they do exist, the EN's size is not a reason for Hazou not to know of them.

There are about 2-3 lunar eclipses a year (on average) and if it's a total lunar eclipse the entire-ass moon turns red. It is noticible. Hazou (and the rest of the EN) should be observing one of those every 2.5 years.

I want to stress this, if lunar eclipses happen in this world Hazou has likely seen them himself.

I don't say this all that often, but it is not simulationist for Hazou not to have heard of lunar eclipses if they occur on this world.
Yes, there are other planets known to the Elemental Nations, and there is only one moon in the sky. If you can explain why the number and names of planets are relevant to the gameplay, we can provide you with count/names
I am mostly interested in this question because I am wondering if the EN is a post-apocalyptic Earth.

So having 5 planets is (very weak) evidence that it is. Since if it's a different planet it would probably have a different number of other planets visible to naked eye, although it might not!

Their names? No reason, you could name them after the elements. In traditional Japanese a couple are like that, these are just from that website I linked in my earlier post:

Suisei - Mercury - Waterstar
Kinsei - Venus - Metalstar
Chikyuu - Earth - Soilball (???)
Tsuki - The Moon - Month (classy)
Kasei - Mars - Firestar
Mokusei - Jupiter - Woodstar
Dosei - Saturn - Earthstar

So keep the pattern for Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, and maybe have Venus be Kazesei - Windstar (since it's got quite the atmosphere), and Jupiter be Raisei - Lightningstar (it's stormy).
Let us throw the question back: which types of mines are historically plausible to have existed in 12th century Japan?
Oh boy, I feel another effortpost coming on. Exciting.

Will get back to you guys.
 
Chikyuu - Earth - Soilball (???)
"Soilball" probably doesn't capture the vibe in the original. More importantly, this one shows that randos in 12th century Japan knew the world was a globe. "kyuu" here is very specifically "sphere"- it's why you see things like "Earth Sphere Federation" in Gundam, "Earth Sphere" is the literal translation of the traditional Japanese name for Earth.

Tsuki - The Moon - Month (classy)
I think the vibe's the other way around fwiw, the months would be named something-moon since they were likely to be based on the lunar cycle.
 
"Soilball" probably doesn't capture the vibe in the original. More importantly, this one shows that randos in 12th century Japan knew the world was a globe. "kyuu" here is very specifically "sphere"- it's why you see things like "Earth Sphere Federation" in Gundam, "Earth Sphere" is the literal translation of the traditional Japanese name for Earth.


I think the vibe's the other way around fwiw, the months would be named something-moon since they were likely to be based on the lunar cycle.
Yeah those are good points. It has been common knowledge that the world is a sphere for a very long time. Even for illiterate Japanese peasants.

Also, even our word for "month" is basically "moonth"
 
"Mari, welcome!" Naruto said, offering her a genuine smile. "Come in, sit down. What can your Hokage do for you today that doesn't involve paperwork?" He shoved aside the stack of papers he'd been working on so that he could see her more clearly from where she stood at the door. Half the stack spilled onto the floor.
Shorter than their stack. +2 charisma with reluctant paper pushers.
Isobe cleared his throat. It was a very meaningful throat-clearing; it packed minutes of stern and passive-aggressive disapproval into a single sound.
Naruto inherited Isobe! Cui bono?
Poof! "Aw man! Boss, why you gotta do me like this? Do you know how much it sucks to know that your entire purpose for existing is to review, initial, and sign some mission analysis?"
Snowflake: stares into camera.
"You had him refilling shadow clones for other ninja so they could train harder. I'm glad we can help Leaf like this, but it worries me a little and I was hoping you would reassure me on some things."
Decisive.
the draining doesn't actually take that long. I can parade a bunch of genin through the room to get drained, Noburi tanks up Sasuke, boom. Five minutes, in and out. Hardly impacts Noburi's training time.
Interesting trade off. Quickly push genin through to be drained or give Noburi time to kiss hands and shake babies.
By the time they finished, it was too late to take NarutoPaperPusher out for ramen.
Fun mirror to last chapter. Gōketsu keeping Naruto up at all hours.
"Hello, boys," Shima said. "Come in, come in. I just made some spice tea. Let me know what you think!" She waved them along into the home of the Toad Sages.

Hazō and Noburi were both trained ninja with years of experience in combat situations. They had excellent situational awareness, honed over years of danger until it amounted to virtually a sixth, and perhaps even a seventh, sense.

At the friendly words of the toad matron, all of that experience and all of that awareness screamed DANGER.
Cruel and unusual mental warfare, likely sharpened on young Orochimaru and poor Jiraiya.
"Smooth," he gasped, eyes watering and face flaming with heat.
:lol:
Hazō sincerely evaluated the benefits of death's sweet release before deciding that no, he still had too much paperwork waiting for him.
Snowflake.


"A bit," Fukasaku said. "But please, feel free to expand."
Not an Akimichi. Whuh?
"You're always wanting me to try new things! Fine, I'm trying new things. I'm trying to learn how to pretend I'm interested while the boy does his blah blah blah! It might help the next time you start talking about weaving!"

"Don't you criticize my hobbies you fat old idiot! You don't hear me telling you how stupid those old scrolls of yours are, do you?"
Excessive PDA. Public display of aggression.
"Plus, it takes so much time," Shima added. "Whenever we train a human we have to set everything else aside.
We are asking for their valuable time. Time that could be spent teaching toads or whatever Sages do.
"Fine," Shima said at last. "We'll take you on."

"Yes!" Noburi and Hazō both said, Noburi pumping a fist and Hazō throwing his hands in the air.
Mission accomplished!
I want to see this 'new paradigm' of yours."
Huu. No training fee? No chain of quests? All about honor at the high levels.
Now, drink your tea while I get the pasta ready."
And their palate grew three sizes that day. From the swelling.
 
Impact Assessment for Dumping 25 Metric Tons of Gold Into the Economy of the Elemental Nations

@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

For some reason, I've been thinking about the inflationary effect of dumping a huge amount of gold into the economy of the Elemental Nations.

There is some historical precedent for this. The Price Revolution was an event taking place during the mid 16th-17th century when, over a 150 year span, prices in Europe rose 6x, generally thought to have been due to an infusion of precious metal specie from the Spanish conquistadors.

That works out to an average rate of inflation per year of 1.12%, nothing compared to today, but historically very high.

We can probably estimate the inflationary impact of Hazou's gold mining on the economy of the EN by comparing the two situations.

First off, we want to get a idea of the relative size of the two economies. In agrarian societies, population size is historically a very good predictor of GDP, since excess in GDP is swiftly mirrored by increasing population AKA the Malthusian Trap.

The population of Europe in 1600 AD was 78 million. The population of the EN is a little tougher to quantify than a simple Google search, but apparently Fire is about 1.1 million.
* The QMs originally said that Fire was about 300,000 people, but the players later convinced us that it should be >1 million, so we soft-retconned it by saying "oh, uh...yeah, it's more like 1 to 1.2 million, but a lot of them have managed to hide out and Leaf mostly isn't aware of them

So there are 5 Elemental Nations and a bunch of minor ones. The other Elemental Nations probably aren't as populated as Fire, and the minors have maybe 0.2 to 0.3 million people total? I'll round it off to 250,000 on average for the minors.

Summed up, that's about 1/10 of the size of Europe, about ~7.8 million (1.1 + 0.9×4 + 12×0.25 = 7.7 million). So we will assume that the economy of the EN is about 1/10th the size of Europe's during the Price Revolution.

Now the influx of specie during said Revolution is minimally about 4000 tons of silver bullion. Since that's the amount recorded shipped directly to Spain by way of Seville.

However, this doesn't count all of it since some was shipped elsewhere, but since we don't want to cause hyperinflation let's be conservative, and say that 400 tons of silver bullion would have a similar effect to the Price Revolution on the EN.

But we have 25 tons of gold, not silver. So let's convert, historically, the price of gold compared to silver was about 10-15x. So our 25 tons of gold is worth about (12*25) = 300 tons of silver. Now this is a little more complicated that I'm suggesting here and there would be a considerable drop in that ratio if the market was flooded with gold and not silver (in Ancient Egypt the ratio was 2.5:1 silver:gold), but good enough.

Preeeeettty similar, and this is good news! That means that as long as we avoid dumping all the gold on the market at once we can prevent serious inflation in the short term.

5% inflation will hardly be noticeable to a society as badly organized as the EN. So we could dump a whole lot of gold on the market before anyone (Naruto) realizes what's going on.

In the loooooong term it'll be considerable, but who cares! The quest won't last that long.
 
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There is some historical precedent for this. The Price Revolution was an event taking place during the mid 16th-17th century when, over a 150 year span, prices in Europe rose 6x, generally thought to have been due to an infusion of precious metal specie from the Spanish conquistadors.
Does using Mansa Musa's trip as a reference make it easier if we don't have to worry about how to compare silver to gold or is it too far to provide a useful lower bound to stay below?
 
I mean, I didn't look at his trip. I could and see if it compares.
False alarm- lunch break started and I took a look. He seems to have given out 1.7 metric tons of gold between 3 cities with some extra after he tried fixing the issue by borrowing the gold back and repaid* the debt plus the considerable interest he was charged. The extent of the economic problems was that the price of gold went from 25 dirhams to below 22 dirhams and didn't rise back for 12 years, but scholars argue that this was within normal price fluctuations for the are and time. He does seem to have had considerably more gold than what he gave out, but the story of him wrecking the economy along his pilgrimage seems to have been much exaggerated.

*It seems definite that Mansa Musa borrowed considerably, but sources are in conflict whether he needed the loans and never paid them back at all or only paid part, or whether the loans he took out were an attempt to stabilize the gold market that failed when he paid them plus the interest back in full.

EDIT: So to bring it back to the ENs, it seems like the 25-27 metric tons of gold we have are between having a small enough impact that it's difficult to distinguish from normal economic variation, and having a big enough impact to cause a relatively small rate of inflation.

The cities Mansa Musa gave out gold in were Cairo, Medina, and Mecca. At the time (early-mid 14th century) Cairo had a population of half a million, making it the largest city west of the Great Wall. The populations of Mecca and Medina during this specific period of time are less well documented but I'm going to estimate they were a million total, maybe an eighth of the ENs. Multiply what Mansa Musa gave away by 8, and... its still about half of what we'd be mining.

TL;DR: Lower bound established alongside Stompy's upper bound from the Spanish silver oopsie, we're probably good as long as we're reasonably careful.
 
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Preeeeettty similar, and this is good news! That means that as long as we avoid dumping all the gold on the market at once we can prevent serious inflation in the short term.
Inflation doesn't easily distribute across the globe tho. When Caesar came into Rome with a bunch of gold from Gaul, inflation in Rome, the city was pretty large. Maybe the entire empire had an average rate of 5% but the effect of Caesar in Rome was very noticeable.

If we want to have an unnoticeable effect, we need to somehow have a large logistics network that can transport large amounts of gold to far off cities and somehow prevent the obvious theft and hijinks. That sounds hard and annoying to deal with.


And chances are good deflation is currently the norm, as it's been mentioned multiple times that due to *reasons* the world population is decreasing and things are getting worse.

The worse the decline in the world is, the higher deflation, and deflation is very bad economic policy for *reasons* which means we can spend a lot more than normal, until we reach some good-ish level of inflation and not only will we get very rich, Leaf (and the world) would get an economic boost from no longer having such a deflationary policy regime.

Depends on what we wanna do:

If we have a long term horizon, let's just become the fed of Leaf, spend until inflation hits Leaf, then stop, wait till the arbitragers and entrepreneurs do their magic, (the price of gold in Leaf is cheaper than the price elsewhere, so win-win trade) And then repeat. Being the Fed of a country (and sorta the world) gives you *power* in ways that won't be obvious to everyone else until it's to late. (Let's be the reserve currency lol)

If we have a short term view, because Rift Race. Ehhh, dump it all. It won't matter if Leaf's economy has some hyperinflation if in a few months we're all dead.


Also, Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for showing that printing money causes inflation. (inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.) That was in 1976! Before then people actually didn't know where inflation came from! (not literally, they had some theories, but broadly true) So unless Naruto is somehow a better economist than Milton Friedman, and has more advanced tools than 1970s America, we could probably just get away with it, as nobody in Leaf even knows what inflation is, much less what causes it. You actually need quite a detailed understanding of the world with high paid bureaucrats tracking the price of CPI over time, etc to actually find the causation. And we've found many, many, many times that Leaf's bureaucrats are absolutely criminally incompetent (if they even bothers to hire anyone in the first place, Akane being one of many, many examples). Leaf doesn't have access to the tools to find out about what causes inflation. Prices sometimes go up because the spirit demons are not pleased is probably the cutting edge of Leaf's understanding of macro.
 
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When Caesar came into Rome with a bunch of gold from Gaul, inflation in Rome, the city was pretty large.
I think a word(s) is missing here.

If we have a long term horizon, let's just become the fed of Leaf, spend until inflation hits Leaf, then stop, wait till the arbitragers and entrepreneurs do their magic, (the price of gold in Leaf is cheaper than the price elsewhere, so win-win trade) And then repeat. Being the Fed of a country (and sorta the world) gives you *power* in ways that won't be obvious to everyone else until it's to late. (Let's be the reserve currency lol)
Ninja have already noticed the power of economics in part because of our earlier difficulties with scrip, and the Tower now has exclusive authority over Leaf's currency. We could do it anyway but it'd involve enough politicking that I wouldn't care for it or enough brute force to make it kind of pointless.
 
I think it was probably intended to be "When Caesar came into Rome with a bunch of gold from Gaul, inflation in Rome (the city as opposed to the empire) was pretty large."
Yeah.


Ninja have already noticed the power of economics in part because of our earlier difficulties with scrip, and the Tower now has exclusive authority over Leaf's currency. We could do it anyway but it'd involve enough politicking that I wouldn't care for it or enough brute force to make it kind of pointless.
Dunno. How would they figure out the price of say, iron, jewelry, and wheat went up because Hazo spent a bunch of gold on buying kunai? I'm guessing they don't track the CPI and have never seen year-over-year inflation. Seems a hard leap to immediately make.
 
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Dunno. How would they figure out the price of say, iron, jewelry, and wheat went up because Hazo spent a bunch of gold on buying kunai? I'm guessing they don't track the CPI and have never seen year-over-year inflation. Seems a hard leap to immediately make.
The Nara. Also being on guard against Hazo/the Goketsu after past shenanigans. Like, after everything we've seen and done it seems pretty realistic that Naruto or whoever could call Hazo up and ask, "Hey, Shikamaru or whoever says you're doing something funny. Sup?"
 
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We are literally in the era of economic warfare. Surely we're keeping track of the prices of common and strategic goods, right?

Right?

Ah, crud.

Let's start a new ministry! The fact that the amount we are improving the economy by flooding it with cheap processed wood from our force mills and NOBURI lumberers is going to finally be acknowledged is unrelated.
 
The fact that the amount we are improving the economy by flooding it with cheap processed wood from our force mills and NOBURI lumberers is going to finally be acknowledged is unrelated.
I think we're too many generations deep in ninja being conditioned to only respect combat for this to have much payoff but eh, if we're getting it for free anyway then might as well hope for a bit of gratitude
 
Sure. I guess they could make the leap in logic without access to any of the empirical data that was originally needed to discover the idea. (Milton Friedman's paper had actual data he needed to collect to show the theory was true, with one amusing example being when the Union burned down the city with the Confederate's printing press, the rate of inflation *mysteriously* stopped, with a clear difference in the rate of inflation in the Confederacy before and after the attack. Natural experiments ftw! )

Basically if Nara are so good at economics, why is there no such thing as a bank in Leaf? Credit unions? Checks? Clearing houses? Tradable futures? Securities? Derivatives? Joint-stock companies? A stock market? Having a bank is the first thing a society develops an understanding of, and then you move up the ladder to more complicated financial things.

Basically, the world we currently see in Leaf looks *very different* than the world where anyone (the Nara included) understand economic concepts as well as anyone in 20th or 21st century America and I don't expect that to change suddenly.
 
Basically if Nara are so good at economics, why is there no such thing as a bank in Leaf? Credit unions? Checks? Clearing houses? Tradable futures? Securities? Derivatives? Joint-stock companies? A stock market? Having a bank is the first thing a society develops an understanding of, and then you move up the ladder to more complicated financial things.
We haven't been paying too much attention and 12th century Japan had some equivalent of several of these, as well as several other older societies. To avoid getting into the weeds, if you check out the Wikipedia page for the history of banking various forms of organized finance started as early as 11 millennia before the present day although well-preserved details are understandably scarce. For well-preserved records of banking specifically, we have to wait for the Code of Hammurabi around 1700 B.C.E. We have organized international trading in the ENs, so I'm reasonably certain that at least some of these financial institutions exist but simply don't matter to us or interest the QMs.

Basically, the world we currently see in Leaf looks *very different* than the world where anyone (the Nara included) understand economic concepts as well as anyone in 20th or 21st century America and I don't expect that to change suddenly.
Basically, we haven't been looking and I don't expect that to change suddenly either. It mostly means I suspect that the Nara and/or the merchant council are a bit savvier than we currently have reason to give them credit for.

EDIT: Also, I think my point about the Hokage/Nara keeping an eye on Hazo doing anything funny with commerce stands. They don't really need to have an advanced understanding of finance to feel like they should check in on the treason dragon if he starts doing unusual stuff.
 
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We haven't been paying too much attention and 12th century Japan had some equivalent of several of these, as well as several other older societies. To avoid getting into the weeds, if you check out the Wikipedia page for the history of banking various forms of organized finance started as early as 11 millennia before the present day although well-preserved details are understandably scarce. We have organized international trading, so I'm reasonably certain that at least some of these financial institutions exist but simply don't matter to us or interest the QMs.
Maybe. But this was my impression I was running off of. (quote below) I was under the impression that our bank run with the script was the first bank, like run ever? Otherwise why would Leaf have needed to nationalize it and crack down so hard if they'd seen it before? Countries (way back) used to have multiple competing currencies backed by different banks all in competition with each other.
AFAIK, there's no such thing as a bank, or a bond. Loans are made by Clans or by the Tower.


And, if Nara (or another rich clan) did understand those things, they wouldn't be doing Ninja missions for pay. As they be making so much money from running a stock market, they would be busy themselves with shoveling barrels of cash and not risking their life to get paid to protect civies on highly dangerous unprofitable missions.
 
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And, if Nara (or another rich clan) did understand those things, they wouldn't be doing Ninja missions for pay. As they be making so much money from running a stock market, they would be busy themselves with shoveling barrels of cash and not risking their life to get paid to protect civies on highly dangerous unprofitable missions.
Ninja culture exists, and there is a deep indoctrination within everyone in the EN to fight and die in the name of their country.
 
And, if Nara (or another rich clan) did understand those things, they wouldn't be doing Ninja missions for pay. As they be making so much money from running a stock market, they would be busy themselves with shoveling barrels of cash and not risking their life to get paid to protect civies on highly dangerous unprofitable missions.
I think you underestimate the power of ninja ideology emphasizing that the duty of ninja is to shut up and do the missions. Even if the Nara felt inclined to neglect missions in favor of banking, money doesn't stop you from getting shanked (literally or metaphorically) by 900 other angry ninja (or for the Nara decision-makers, the other Clan Lords+Hokage) for slacking off.

As for the novelty of the scrip, I recall that scrip was novel in that it was fiat currency. I'm less certain about the concept of a bank being novel to this degree but it wouldn't surprise me if it were. EDIT: Specifically, when we established the Akane Memorial Seal Bank we got 0 questions about what a bank was and no one acted like the basic concept of a bank was unusual or unfamiliar. Just the 'Seal' bit.
 
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Ninja culture exists, and there is a deep indoctrination within everyone in the EN to fight and die in the name of their country.
Sure. Sure. But my point is the Nara clan is not famously fabulously wealthy for their banking skills (that I know of). Or other clans.

As for the novelty of the scrip, I recall that scrip was novel in that it was fiat currency. I'm less certain about the concept of a bank being novel to this degree but it wouldn't surprise me if it were.
I, uh, don't know how you think banking works. You deposit money at the bank. They give you something that says "you have 3000 ryo at Big Bank Inc" That piece of paper claming you have 3000 ryo at the bank is fiat? As that money is no longer backed by 3000 ryo. That 3000 ryo is given out as a loans to others to start businesses, to build houses, etc. Banks make money by borrowing short and lending long, and take a cut for the spread. Fractional reverse banking etc. That piece of paper that you were given is not backed by 3000 ryo, but instead by a basket of long term loans. It's why bank runs can happen. As that 3000 ryo piece of paper the bank gave you is not actually backed by 3000 ryo. But by time sensitive loans.

This is why banks are the center of any financial collapse ever. As banks are somewhat in the business of "printing money" or increasing the money supply by having both the depositor think they have 3000 ryo, and the loan receiver also believing they have 3000 ryo to build a house. Both can't be true at the same time. Hence there's hidden leverage in the system.
 
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I, uh, don't know how you think banking works.
I work at a bank. I can assure you that fiat currency is distinct from a check. That said, I did goof in terminology, I was misremembering which type of scrip it was (company scrip vs bank scrip).

Also, we're getting into the weeds like I was trying to avoid, so actually let's ignore all this and get back to the main point:
Also, I think my point about the Hokage/Nara keeping an eye on Hazo doing anything funny with commerce stands. They don't really need to have an advanced understanding of finance to feel like they should check in on the treason dragon if he starts doing unusual stuff.
 
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