Also, it needs to be an exciting game where Hazou occasionally gets to PUNCH people and engage in various forms of by-the-seat-of-his-pants wild improvisation or what's the point? I'm not in this to improve the lives of fictional people after all!
So to some extent, the boring stuff can't be too boring or must be doable mainly off-screen in the background. I'm having a lot of fun with the Mist Exams, and I find them a lot more satisfying than I think I would trying to make a force wall sawmill make in Leaf or whatever.
* eaglejarl and Neji cheer in the background *
More seriously, I enjoy the exams and general "ninja doing ninja things" segments of this quest as well. Still, it's nice for Hazou to have a heroic motivation that goes beyond just being loyal to his village and friends. The QMs have reimagined the Narutoverse as a crapsack world, and I think it's natural to want to improve it. Unfortunately, there is no grand villain that we can punch to make everything better, and so engaging with the political and economic systems of the world is a necessity. I personally also think it can be very fun, so long as we don't spend all of our time cooped up in a sealing lab.
I have a lot more sympathy for clan secrets than you seem to, because most of the justification for them is that they are the equivalent of military technology that can literally get your family killed if they leak out. Recall the example about how the main reason that Naruto could be successfully kidnapped is that Itachi understood how shadow clones work and that he could use one to transmit a damaging genjutsu back to Naruto. I haven't really seen much indication that clans are hoarding a bunch of non-military secrets.
I don't know if Shaikau would sell blueprints exactly, but I assume he would (and does) allow multiple copies of the printing press to be made rather than only having a single one, located in his clan compound, operated exclusively by loyal clan members. Even knowing that this vastly increases the probability that the printing press design will be copied by someone who gets a good look at it and sells the information. Printing press information leaking doesn't put the lives of his family at stake and is therefore an acceptable risk for more profits from multiple presses.
As for the sawmill, hell no I wouldn't sell someone a bunch of seals to go into competition (though maybe I'd take a share in their business if the market seemed large enough to support a second sawmill). If someone wants to go into competition, they need to partner up with a sealmaster who can make a force wall saw for them... something that's a lot easier to figure out once the concept has been proven out.
I have sympathy for keeping bloodline secrets, secret, and for specialized ninjutsu in general. I do think, however, that the line between military and civilian innovations is very blurry, and our own history is full of examples of the former becoming the latter to great benefit of everyone involved. I'd be rather miffed, if, for example, Jiraiya would veto the Force Wall sawmill because he could see potential military applications of movable Force Walls.
In any case, to me, the point of working on the sealing sawmill or any similar idea is to proliferate the innovation as fast as possible. If that's best done by dominating the market and maintaining exclusivity, fine. But if it would go faster if we sold some seals to civilian entrepreneurs from outside our market reach (if only so their own sealmaster can reverse-engineer them), I'd be all for doing that as well. Otherwise, what's the point? To earn more money? Would be nice if we could stop accepting Pangolin blood diamonds, but that's unfortunately not an option.
Maybe you're right, and clan secrets are also subject to the "NINJA MUST PUNCH" rule. Shino's reaction to us inquiring about Aburame goggles would support it. Still, my understanding of this system is that anything at all that provides an advantage of any kind will be hoarded, even if the advantage is very small relative to the utility of releasing it publically.
I don't really want to pick a marginal advantage for our ingroup over a huge gain for all of humanity. I think this decision logic is a major reason the setting looks as it does. We already murdered a ship-full of innocent civilians for a small boon to the search for Naruto, and I'd very much rather not repeat that decision in a different setting.
