Discussion Money

I’ve noticed that a lot of CN/KR/JP authors don’t understand the value of money. I’ve seen a lot of them act like a small amount is a big sum. I just read Solo Leveling and found it stupid how they did business. The mc is by far the strongest hunter in Korea and can solo S rank dungeons. The knights guild only offered him 20% to help them clear an A rank dungeon that he could solo. The mc says he deserves 50% and they get pissy until they realize it’s a fair offer. Japan also has an S rank gate open in Tokyo after their 10 strongest hunters died. They beg other countries to send hunters and none of them respond. An S rank hunter from Russia asks them for 10 million usd a day for using his barriers to block the gate. His barriers can block S rank hunters. He is the strongest support hunter in the world. The Japanese guy feels ripped off and gets pissed. He then agreed after realizing that he had no choice. Why the F would he feel ripped off over such a cheap price! That would only be 3,650,000,000 usd a year! I think the USA spends over 600 billion a year on military during peacetime! Why would Japan be scared to pay 3.65 billion to save their country from being destroyed! The dude could have asked for 3 trillion a year if he wanted to and it would be 100% understandable! 3.65 billion is literally nothing! The US makes around 20 trillion a year!

 

To be fair, their economy is different from ours and webnovel writers probably earn very little, living on cup noodles. Ending up with novels about actual food due to it, lol.

 

Everyone loves a bargain.

 

Hmm... Did you realy think any autor would actualy think about the economics involved and make the story belivable?
... when i think about it they should.

But to be fair, as i saw it, from what i can remember about the example you gave, that was more the author trying to develop the character of the official (That russian should be flattered to be allowed to help us defend againt the gate, us the greate japanese). What i don't exactly understand is why the russian did not ask for more, afterall he would have to work 24/7 and is one of the strongest hunters in the world, even if he only have defencive abilities.

But yes, most novels got problems with the economy (especialy fantasy isekai).

 

Most authors earn little so they have little sense of money. Not everyone makes it rich being an author. Same with Mangakas and comic artists.

The majority of poor people would think a thousand bucks is a huge sum.
The majority of rich people would think a thousand bucks is a tiny drop in the swimming pool.

The view and perspective are different depending on where you stand.

I've always felt like the authors/mangakas/etcs were talking out their asses when they start talking about the economics of their world.

 

ur talking about the USA's economy when it's about Japan
also not sure if u understand economics

the 1st part is valid tho yea

 

To be fair, not all of the author are as senseless in economics as solo levelling author. Of course, they're not perfect too, but they aren't as that bad in economic, to say the least. This, applied to most of the novels that i read, and most of them are japanese novel.

Some author even went and explain about economics in so much details as the story itself is about money.

I don't remember the name but there's JP novel where the mc is summoned to isekai as a hero, but since there's nothing like demon king or anything that evil in that world, his job is to help the ruler of a state to save and improve the economic of that state. The novel taught me about banking, credit system, how money works in country scale, and how debt works. I remember being impressed by how they explained the economics better than any youtube videos or books i've read.

Some novel like Overlord or Death Mage don't even have an actual use for the other country's currency because they have their own currency and their currency don't correlate with other currency. For example in Overlord, the currency value of any other than Yggdrasil is simply far too worthless to MC. He have the exchange system of Yggdrasil but since the value of the other currency is too small, he needed a lots of them just to exchange into one coin of Yggdrasil currency. Hence, he only use those other currency to pay the human who worked for him.

In Death Mage however, MC's country don't even interact with other countries because how racist those countries are. And since it's medieval-kind of setting, duplicating money aren't that hard either.

He's talking about Japan's economy, in a Korean novel.

Also, he clearly didn't understand that hiring and procuring isn't the same.

"USA spends over 600 billion a year on military during peacetime! Why would Japan be scared to pay 3.65 billion to save their country from being destroyed"

His statement itself said it, USA procured permanent military assets for 600 billion a year, while Japan is scared to pay 3.65 billion a year to only temporarily hire someone who

1. A foreigner
2. Can go back to their country at any time
3. Can break their contract if they feels like it
4. Can always betray the country

Japan's feeling of not wanting to hire that guy for 3.65 billion a year is actually well founded.

Why would you pay so much to a single person who will not even be your permanent assets? His comparison is way off the chart

 

I'm saying it's not fair to compare Japan's economy and the USA's economy lol
look at Japan's economy instead of talking about the U.S.

 

Japan has the 3rd best economy with over 5 trillion a year. Saving their country is priceless. 3.65 billion is just a couple of bucks to them.

 

That ain't how it works either. GDP =/= Spending power
5 trillion is the sum of their products & services, doesn't mean they'll be able to easily drop a couple billion. Though, you would need more context than that to see how much they can actually give.

 

Have some numbers I found.

In 2015, USD 42 bil was approved for military budget (1% of GDP).
In 2020, Japan's seeking approval for USD 48.5 bil or 50 bil depending on which source you go with. Keep in mind 2020 = Olympics + fear of China's territorial shtick.

According to this, Japan in general spends around 1.1% to 1.3% of its GDP on the military.

Now that all that's done, 3.65 billion a year? Unless they're idiots, what Parliament would say no to that deal? From the 2020 article (50b) they're planning on spending more than 10 times of that to research "just in case" defense systems against China. An imminent threat would surely get a yes right away, no matter how anti-foreigner they are.

 

Uuh i think it is a common sense that its not "just in case" anymore when a country hostile to them invaded their water. So spending 10 times of that to fight a country that are also rich and bigger than themselves is not a bad idea at all

 

Exactly!! Why can't people see that GDP is not everything. Remember that Japan is also a country prone to natural disasters. They still have to pour moneys into flood prevention technology etc. And gdp doesn't include everything.

Its not as simple as "oh we got 100 dollars, so 10 dollars go to food today, another 10 is for vehicle gas, oh wow we still got 80 dollars"...
If it was this simple then economic analyst won't have a problem in their works at all

1 or 2 percent might sound very small to us, but not to others.

Heck, to me, 1 or 2 percent changes in disk space is big enough for me to find the source of the decrease of my disk space, even though i still have few TB space left

 

I honestly think they're better off spending some of that money on espionage counter-measures. China seems more inclined to spend the next 2 years or so on an economy/intelligence/cultural war. But research also takes time, so I'm not sure what to really comment on that. Other than Japan really can afford that 3.65 billion in this particular novel/case unless their GDP dropped like mad to the point where they're not willing to spend on saving their country from immediate danger.

 

This is something off record, but Japan's news have been said to be controlled by china. This is depicted in great details in novel Gate - Thus JSDF or something. That novel shows how hard it is to make a counter measure against espionage or media control. I suggest giving it a try.

Or better yet, why do you think they haven't put their money in that counter measure? Of course they already do it duh, as well as any other rich or big countries, but what kind of espionage counter measure will truly works if its known by the world and the country that sent the spy itself right? Hence, the reason you're suggesting this might means Japan are really good at keeping their counter measure a secret, if it ever existed.

Also in that novel, Japan is not getting the permanent asset. They're just hiring outsource. In the real life, Japan increasing military budget means they're getting new, permanent assets, and their own military power can get stronger too.

In that korean novel, not only japan have to hire an outsource, that guy is the only person at that. In other means, he became the pioneer of Japan security.

You know what that means?
Do you know the consequences of having to outsource someone as a pioneer?
I worked as a software engineer before, in a great team of my company. We are cooperating with few other departments in our company to develop a big software to be used in business. And you know what makes me quit? The people who were tasked to pioneer the core of the software were outsourced from another country. They're not even from our country, much less our company. What do you think will happen when you outsource someone to pioneer something? You have to completely depend on them. When the people outsourced from our company ended their contract, at that time only god knows how fck up we all are. Since they have and the one who pioneered the core software, they knew everything about it. And when they left, nobody can handle the core software anymore. The source code are so messy, no instructions whatsoever, only those who pioneered these mess can understand how to read the said mess.

For god sake, making an outsource as a pioneer of your project is the worst decision anyone can ever make. There's no even more worst mistake than this one. For example, if even the project have been long on due, if its pioneer is not outsourced, then everything can still be saved.

Also, please be aware that GDP is not everything. As some of the guy here already stated, GDP =/= spending power.

Therefore, Japan putting 50 billions or even 100 billions into military is much much more better than hiring an outsource to pioneer their security for cheap. Heck if i am japan president i wont outsource him as pioneer even if he's doing it for free. I would instead put moneys into R&D into that barrier thingy

 

I'm not even talking GDP. They can afford it. Okay, fine. Established.

But it's outsourcing an outsider to be the bottleneck of your country's safety vs imminent invasion. Note the emphasis there. From how OP described things in that novel (haven't read), Japan as a country has no way of defending themselves from a known threat that is right in the middle of their capital. A threat that can kill them at any time right then and there. In what world is valid economics/safety measures in peacetime = the right thing to do in war? Japan has lost its defenses. They've asked other countries for help. In fact, if they've started asking other countries for help, that means they're already open to importing a foreigner in. They're desperate.

I get what you're saying. But there's also a problem in your example that doesn't fit in this context. You're in coding. It's all about documentation there. If the pioneers are bad at documentation, the higher-ups should've put in a safety measure the moment the ball started rolling. This is not coding. This is fighting power. Pure and simple battle prowess. No documentation. Sure, you'll be left in a muck when they leave and if they go back on their contract, but you'd have lived another day. Paying them means you've bought at least another day's peace for your country. Another day to research and train up your defenses. And since the guy is charging per day, just pay him on a weekly basis or a daily basis. Nothing says you have to pay him a year in advance. Unless 10 million USD a day is too much for the economy (which hasn't been established it's not yet), what does future spending power mean when you could all die tomorrow? Even if it makes sense. Sure, they don't spend the near 4 billion they're asking for. They're elected officials. If they survive to election again and the population knows hundreds/thousands of their family and friends died just because the government doesn't want to spend >0.5% of the country's GDP, they won't be keeping their jobs.

Just because we're talking about whether Japan can afford to pay that 3.65 billion a year based on GDP doesn't mean that's the proper basis for dismissing the points we're making. We're only analyzing GDP because why else would someone not want to live another day when they're already begging for it? We're only analyzing the GDP because the Japanese initially refused to pay the Russian because they feel ripped off. Why then? Can they not afford it? The GDP numbers are all there just to see why they'd feel ripped off.

On the whole China thing, I've already said I'm being iffy on the matter. I don't like that they're spending on researching something that might never work or need, but I get that it's research. I get that this might all be some front for hidden operations. I know I'm commenting on something I don't have full research on. I only raised it as a point of Japan willing to spend a lot on something that might not work for at least a few years. If they're willing to do that (and no, building missiles =/= actual power forever if you're not building the proper missiles for the specific type of war you'll be going to have who knows when. Technology develops fast.), why would they not be willing to spend so much less than that for something that will be of use right now?

Off-topic: I doubt there's any news in the world that's not controlled in some way or other by China's immature bullying.

 

I don't see why it is strange for a character to be pissed off that he has to spend billions out of state funds to pay one single person.
If they had refused to pay it in the end despite it being absolutely necessary that would have been strange, but that is a different matter.

 

But this single person is worth more than 10 of their strongest men (who died)? Isn't it just akin to paying 3.65 billion for a wall? Surely they expected someone to ask for billions, right? Who's going to save the country on just a CEO's salary? (jk, I know how bad politicians are)

 

Besides all these guys who're doing all this research (kudos to them btw, and yes, I agree that authors should always do if they're basing their novels in places that really exist), just keep in mind that some authors simply just don't give a shit. Either that, or they have no idea how to world-build…