My opinion of 3 farmer to 1 tradeperson is too generous, based on what I know. It's more likely 10% tradeperson and 90% farmers. The vast majority of people in Konoha will be farmers.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- 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
My opinion of 3 farmer to 1 tradeperson is too generous, based on what I know. It's more likely 10% tradeperson and 90% farmers. The vast majority of people in Konoha will be farmers.
- Location
- Yes.
We could develop resurrection and bring back all the people she regrets killing?
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Ooh, that's a good one.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Porn/lingerie
- Location
- Australia
Can be justified by saying that chakra / sage genetics increases yields of crops and reduces disease so there is less overhead in agriculture.
How much do we expect the cryptography division to pay? Probably more than D-ranks, and no more dangerous.
Kagome could take some assignments working in there (if he has clearance to do so) while we're waiting on licenses.
Kagome could take some assignments working in there (if he has clearance to do so) while we're waiting on licenses.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
[]Action Plan: WANDGUN
Goals (in order of personal preference as to whether they occur onscreen):
Goals (in order of personal preference as to whether they occur onscreen):
- WANDGUN
- Encourage team to talk to the nice head doctor.
- Make Clan Contacts (Aburame)
- Mari's Birthday Planning [may occur offscreen, or at a later update]
- Other research and training and stuff I guess, even if it obviously isn't as WANDGUN as WANDGUN.
- WANDGUN [will be expanded on later, obviously, just want to get the rest of this stuff down]
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- Rescind Hazou's previous statement to Noburi -- they may not need... quite as much treatment as Kagome does, but he's not happy with how he reacted and isn't willing to let it stand.
- It may be that all they need is some time to unwind and actually, you know, settle in Leaf, but no need to leave that to chance.
- Also, Hazou needs to work on his temper. He can't be exploding like he did earlier toward Jiraiya in public, toward anyone.
- Talk to Mari about it. Use the opportunity to gangpress her into it, too.
- Rescind Hazou's previous statement to Noburi -- they may not need... quite as much treatment as Kagome does, but he's not happy with how he reacted and isn't willing to let it stand.
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- Get briefing from Jiraiya and/or Mari on the Aburame and other clans on their team before making contact with them. Clear the rest of the plan in this section with one of them.
- Prior to meeting with them, do desensitization training with insects, along with the rest of the team, as necessary.
- Invite [the person Jiraiya and/or Mari suggests] and their team (?) to training.
- No immediate ulterior motives here -- just try to be make friends, have some friendly spars, and whatnot.
- Hazou does have ideas for seals to be used with the Aburame's kikaichu -- pressure-sensitive Earth/Air Domes (or just "seals", if those are to be considered clan secrets) may (but no promises!) be workable, among other ideas -- but don't be pushy or condescending about it, if the topic comes up at all.
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- Mention Mari's birthdate to Jiraiya in private and ask his own.
- Point out to the team that there may not be much point in throwing a surprise party, considering, well, she's Mari.
- That said, maybe they should put together some prank gifts in addition to their actual ones?
- Separately, approach Mari. Tell her much the same -- they don't stand a chance at slipping a surprise party past her.
- But... what about if she surprised the rest of them with the party? He never did officially end his prank war with Noburi... Could be fun!
- Mention Mari's birthdate to Jiraiya in private and ask his own.
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- Complete training and/or research plans.
- Talk to Noburi about quantifying Chakra
- Also nudge him in the direction of using medical ninjutsu through his bloodline again -- even if it he doesn't want to use it for fighting, it can only help to be able to heal at a distance.
- Talk to Keiko and Jiraiya about facilitating trade with the Pangolin and Toads to generate wealth
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[color changed from transparent to red in order to facilitate discussion]
Here's what's going on from my perspective:
Doylist:
Naruto canon makes no sense in a lot of ways and the QMs are stuck trying to make it work. We are neither economists nor medieval historians so we may well be (probably are) getting things wrong. We acknowledge this.
The setting we're working with is supposed to be medieval tech, but we've got punch wizards running around who can (e.g.) conjure walls out of nowhere. The playerbase has, with trivial effort, come up with a long list of ways to make a ton of money using ninja magic. This is a rational setting; other people are allowed to be smart too and there need to be justifications for why things look the way they do.[1] If it took you negligible effort to come up with those ideas then it's safe to assume that someone else thought of them first in the century that Leaf has existed.[2]
We have a few options for why Leaf is not a post-scarcity society. The easiest would be 'magic cannot do that' but we'd prefer not to go that route. A better reason is 'politics' -- people won't let you do that. It's a good reason because it's plausible (people do stupid things all the time, even when those things are against their interests) and because it's something that the players can grapple with. If we were to say "well, jutsu don't work when used outside of combat because the gods don't like that" then there would be nothing you could do. If the reason is 'politics' then you can work to change people's minds or find ways around the obstacle.
Watsonian:
You're probably right that everyone would be better off in the long run if the Merchant Council would get out of the way. It's even likely that (at least some) people in-universe recognize this. The key phrase there is in the long run. In the short term, letting ninja loose on the economy would cause a lot of disruption. People who are currently rich would become poor. They don't like that idea and are actively working to prevent it. They have enough sway that they have convinced people that this is a good idea.
Leaf (aka Konoha aka Konohakagure aka "The Village Hidden in the Leaves") was the first ninja village and it was only founded a hundred(ish) years ago. It was an entirely new concept and the other ninja villages built themselves around the pattern that Leaf established, albeit with their own twists. That's why the 'merchant council restricting ninja' thing is widespread -- it's not universal and it's not coordinated, it's simply people adopting a pattern that was shown to work. In the long run it's probably not stable, but we're still in early days for the village system.
In order for this situation to change there would need to be someone with power who wanted it to change. There doesn't seem to be such a person. Speaking solely in generalities and acknowledging in advance that there are undoubtedly exceptions:
- The members of the Merchant Council (upper-middle and upper class) are happy and rich. Change is more likely to harm than help.
- The First-, Second-, and Third Hokages had a stable village that was relatively wealthy and improving over time. Could they have gotten it to improve faster by going to the mattresses with the MC? Maybe, but it would cause a lot of havoc and would undoubtedly hurt a lot of people. Why take the risk when you're on a generally positive path?
- Jiraiya has less than zero desire to start a big brouhaha at home while focused on the Naruto / Akatsuki issue.
- The ninja clans are happy and rich. Change is more likely to harm than help.
- The average ninja is comfortable. Change is more likely to harm than help.
- The working people have various reasons for not throwing the MC out:
- For most of them, getting rid of the MC and letting ninja do all the commerce is outside their Overton Window.
- Some of them lack the education to understand what's happening.
- Others have been convinced by propaganda that this is the best and safest way to run things.
Hm, this was intended to be a few paragraphs and it got away from me a bit. I hope it clarifies things for you.
[1] This is an ongoing blind spot for the hivemind, actually. Over the last eighteen months the QMs have repeatedly heard complaints about how unreasonable it is that we've put roadblocks in the path of Hazō's trivial path to godhood. At one point we actually asked "when you come up with ideas, please provide reasons why no one else thought of it before" but that didn't get any traction.
[2] Ideas like "let's make buildings using MEW" are blindingly obvious and would definitely have been done already if there were not a reason against them. Ideas like "let's set up a meat processing plant" are much less obvious and it's reasonable that no one thought of them. Thorough workups on implementation and stated explanations for why something wouldn't have been thought of will go a long way towards the marketspace still being available.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Sorry about that. For me, it's less a case of spoons than mental bandwidth -- it gives me a headache in that "I'm learning a new skill" kind of way that also happens when I practice piano to think through all the conclusions that follow from a proposal. Which, uh, yeah, there's a reason I'm (usually) sympathetic toward your aspirin-gobbling plight 
NewAgeOfPower
Engineering Pornagrapher Extraordinaire
- Location
- An Certain Hive of Scum & Villainy, known as NYC
But QM-Sama, building a Meat Packing plant involves lots of startup capital, which we lack, or Jutsus, but those would be banned by the Civvies.
- Location
- Australia
Can you confirm if the Clan Stock Exchange method (two summoners working to exploit Arbitrage (market price differences) using the summon realm and storage seals) is viable? And if it sidesteps MC licencing issues if its only one way (we never sell in fire country)
As for why it hasn't been done before, Stock exchanges are an evolved economic theory and two allied summoners within the same clan combined with economic focus combined with sealing skills on both sides of the transaction has never occurred before.
There are probably a few allied summoners in each village.
- Location
- Australia
But not the same Clan, and not sealers, and from what we have seen, its rare for Ninja to care about non-combat applications. (even med-nin which is focussed on getting back into combat)
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- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
@eaglejarl I'm at work now so not able to properly respond right now but the more you explain your reasoning the more ridiculous it seems. Will hopefully have a more detailed critique up tomorrow
- Location
- Australia
Get a loan from the Akimichi. Repay it by providing them with cheap meat for their restaurants.
- Location
- ...Nice try.
Moloch.
Ninja need to eat, ninja magic can't make crops grow, so civilians aren't immediately irrelevant. At the same time, every bit of surplus goes to the military because the first nation that doesn't do that gets invaded, its villages burned, its men killed, its women raped, its children enslaved. Throwing all your surplus at the military happens IRL (North Korea) and doesn't require everyone to hate money.
Notice that this explains why nobody has thought of Hazou's ascent to godhood before: they have, but Moloch ate it. People have noticed it's trivial to build building with earth jutsu, and do, but this hasn't lead to post-scarcity because Moloch ate all the surplus it generated. Hazou doesn't immediately turn into Bill Gates because (1) price must equal marginal cost, so if magic is trivially easy, it doesn't pay that much and (2) Moloch eats it.
This also gives the players a way around the obstacle (coordination).
Real income increases in the short term. The instant someone pays a ninja less than they would have paid a civilian, their real income increases.
IRL, every time you restrict trade (except for maybe fissile material?), a black market springs up approximately immediately, because trade necessarily makes both sides better off. Every civilian who has a comparative advantage (which includes every farmer and every civilian with a trade) benefits (immediately) from participating in such trade, as does every ninja. In fact, the only civilians who wouldn't want trade along the lines of comparative advantage are precisely the ones who no one (ninja or civilian) would trade with if they were allowed to trade with ninja, making their threat to not trade with ninja somewhat empty.
(And now I kind of want a Firefly/MfD crossover where a crew of 5 missing-nin who take on four civilians, three of them highly skilled in different areas and the fourth the sage but also insane, who travel about the EN, smuggling goods and clandestinely using ninja bullshit to provide civilians goods and services at a fraction of the going price.)
Note that this doesn't require a knowledge of comparative advantage, just the ability to notice that black market granite (or whatever) costs less than civilian granite (or whatever). Individuals act against their self interest all the time, but I am unaware of tens of thousands of people standing up and saying, loudly and firmly, "we would like to pay drastically higher prices." The US has quotas on tobacco that increases the price of all crops, but there's at least a causal chain a few links long. Banning ninja from trading with civilians is like Jimmy McMillan demanding a minimum rent that's 10 (or 100 or 1000) times higher than normal rents currently are.
Given how stubbornly black markets crop up IRL, I don't find it very plausible that they have managed to convince everyone that pay 10 (or 100 or 1000) times as much for goods and services is a good idea, but let's say it happened in Leaf. Even if other nations are copying Leaf's setup, as they were setting up, they were going to have every civilian with a trade and every farmer clamoring, hard, to be able to trade with ninja simply because it costs dramatically less and however irrationally you can sometimes get people to act, you don't see widespread money bonfires. And the second a nation doesn't bend over backwards to prevent people from doing what they desperately want to do, its economy grows an order of magnitude or two overnight. (If North Korea is our reference class for a highly militaristic economic shithole that doesn't allow its citizens to act in their own self interest, then the nation that does sensible things for economic growth is South Korea, which has a GDP roughly 50x North Korea's).
Taking (some of) these one at a time
- The merchant council has members who are merchants. Merchants have to buy inputs. Many (most?), if they could buy from ninja, could plausibly reduce spending on materials by a factor of 10 (or 100 or 1000). Being happy and rich is not enough to to ignore this.
- Ninja clans could plausible increase their revenue by a factor of 10 (or 100 or 1000) by being allowed to do ninja stuff for profit. Shikaku thought that an 8% revenue bump would be enticing to the Hyuuga. Being rich and happy is not enough to ignore a 1000% (or 10000% or 100000%) revenue increase.
- Ditto on ninja in general.
- Working people... the idea was never for the ninja to do all the commerce (just precisely the commerce they have the comparative advantage for), and... actually I'm not a political scientist, so sure, maybe "ninja use their wizardry for economic gain" doesn't occur to them. But as long as they understand that it takes a trivial effort for the wizards to wizard meaning they don't pay as much, they have enough education to make the equilibrium incredibly unstable.
- "What it takes an entire crew of masons weeks to build, you can create in seconds with one jutsu." If we round "seconds" up to "1 hour", put a crew of masons equal to 5 and assume 40 hour weeks, and call "weeks" "2 weeks", then 1 Hazou is worth 400 masons: a thousandfold increase in production is plausible in at least some areas.
- Singapore has the death penalty for drug possession, resulting in the execution of a few hundred. Threat of assassination may hinder black markets, but won't stop them.
- Apparently you can buy fissile material on the black market. And now I'm probably on an FBI watchlist or something for googling "can you buy fissile material on the black market"
- Location
- ...Nice try.
I should also say that I deeply appreciate the amount of effort @eaglejarl @Velorien and @OliWhail put into the worldbuilding. This is the first time I've happened across something that didn't work. Given the length of MfD, this is pretty remarkable.
Ideally, I would like there to be someone else here who has more of an econ background than "has read Introduction to Economic Analysis and done all the exercises" to take point, but that doesn't (?) seem to be the case, so if the QMs would like to run econ ideas past me, I think it works if they give me what they plan on posting and I provide feedback and not tell anyone until it's posted.
Ideally, I would like there to be someone else here who has more of an econ background than "has read Introduction to Economic Analysis and done all the exercises" to take point, but that doesn't (?) seem to be the case, so if the QMs would like to run econ ideas past me, I think it works if they give me what they plan on posting and I provide feedback and not tell anyone until it's posted.
A team of masons isn't made useless by MEW using ninja. A team of masons would specialize in something else other than raw material output, because MEW can only create roughly the same exact granite walls. They must be worked to provide something other than a temporarily/good enough shelter for Hazō and his party.
Note that in a population in which 90% of people are farmers, there aren't actually a lot of stonemasons going around.
Note that in a population in which 90% of people are farmers, there aren't actually a lot of stonemasons going around.
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- Location
- ...Nice try.
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me and adding detail or think you're disagreeing, but this is what I've been trying to get at. Ninjas don't have even have absolute advantage everywhere, but even if they did, they can't possibly have comparative advantage everywhere, which is why unleashing the ninja wouldn't cause civilians to become poverty-stricken beggars.
I was making my own point about masons not actually being outcompeted by ninja.
- Location
- Australia
You can reconcile this a bit with canon but it requires ninja missions / training retainer to pay significantly more than the large amounts a ninja could make doing civilian work.
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- Location
- Australia
The nobles can't kill ninja. Ninja have defacto rule because you can replace a dead noble far easier than you can replace a dead ninja. Ninja have a monopoly on force and wealth.