Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki Episode 2 Discussion

MugenNoShirayuki said:
So the farmers knew enough about supply and demand to spring on the demand for cotton, but didn't know enough about supply and demand to meet the demand for food when the cotton market crashed?

ninja_jesus said:


The bit about the cotton market crashing isn't in the Light Novel so it was most likely made up for the anime. The LN just explained that cotton became so high in demand that every farm switched to commercial crops to make easy money, and eventually the economy started solely importing food. And because of the strain of the demand for food, the cost of food imports also went up, which in turn negatively affected the country's working class.

It sounds far-fetched but it really isn't, I live in Hawaii which for the most part imports almost everything, including foodstuffs, so it's pretty believable to me. We're even suffering from higher import costs every month.

MugenNoShirayuki said:
And NONE of this is brought up in the episode. The episode only presents the logic that the farmers were smart enough to account for supply and demand and then suddenly became idiots who can't understand market crashes for the sake of propping up the MC.

MugenNoShirayuki said:


Does Hawaii have adequate farmland to devote to growing their own food, though? Because if there's now currently a demand for food, then I would think that these farmers who noticed the demand for cotton would consider switching back to food to meet that demand.

ninja_jesus said:


Hawaii does but the long and short of it is that it's cheaper for stores to import certain staple crops than to grow it locally because of energy and labor costs. And our economy is centered around tourism so the demand of jobs are in the service industry, not agricultural.

malMaxi said:

I agree that this would be a good moment to give us a glimpse of

On another hand, I don't think going any further into explanations would be fruitful. Ultimately, farmers are idiots for letting go of the one thing that made them indispensable (food production) and the MC is correct for pointing that out. I don't see any problem with the outcome positioning the MC as more intellectually powerful than the farmers, this dynamic is actually the whole basis for appeal of the "stuck-in-the-past" subgenre of isekai.

ninja_jesus said:


The bit about the cotton market crashing isn't in the Light Novel so it was most likely made up for the anime. The LN just explained that cotton became so high in demand that every farm switched to commercial crops to make easy money, and eventually the economy started solely importing food. And because of the strain of the demand for food, the cost of food imports also went up, which in turn negatively affected the country's working class.

MugenNoShirayuki said:
I'm not looking at this from the perspective of genre appeal, I'm looking at it from the perspective of trying to understand the narrative as making reasonable sense, and right now I'm having trouble doing that; it seems like this conflict was created solely for the MC to show off and not because it was a natural result of the citizens acting the way they would reasonably act.

MugenNoShirayuki said:


The farmers are unreasonably idiots though, considering they had enough knowledge of supply and demand to catch the needs of the market before it started, and then suddenly too incompetent to realize that they could benefit from doing the same for food. It's artificial stupidity put in place after the farmers already demonstrated significant understanding of economics in order to have the MC be a savior to dig them out of the whole they dug themselves into.

I'm not looking at this from the perspective of genre appeal, I'm looking at it from the perspective of trying to understand the narrative as making reasonable sense, and right now I'm having trouble doing that; it seems like this conflict was created solely for the MC to show off and not because it was a natural result of the citizens acting the way they would reasonably act.

gaulby said:


The likely reason you are not able to believe it is likely you are trying to see in an idealistic scenario where everyone is good. First, this is a medieval period. Majority of the lands are distributed to Nobles. And guess who controls majority of whatever is it in those lands? Well, obviously, Nobles.

You're point will only be valid if those Nobles we speak of are all for solving the kingdom's crisis, which is obviously not. I mean, look at the current governments. Everywhere you look you can see officials who doesn't really care about anyone other than themselves. Put that into the equation in this anime and there you have it, tons of reasons to cause these issues.

malMaxi said:

I already gave you two ways in which the situation could make reasonable sense - the fact that you can't get harvest more than once a year, which creates a year of lag before you can correct your mistake, and the fact that corrupt parties are expecting to profit from selling the cotton and are more interested in that than feeding the citizens.

I'll also add to that the notion that the automatic opportunistic change of production back to foods that you insist should happen won't necessarily happen. If the motive for production change is money, then the change back can only happen if someone is actually willing and able to pay for the food. However, the people of the country are poor and cannot pay for the food. So what's the incentive for the individual farmperson to change production back to foodstuffs? The farmperson isn't being held responsible for feeding the entire country, that's the king's job (as far as the cotton-selling farmperson is concerned).

Also it is not like the change back is free. At the very least, you need to clear the field of cotton and also buy a new set of seeds and saplings to start growing foods again.

You aren't wrong that the show positions the MC as having superior understanding compared to the laymen. However, he has direct access to all the aggregated economics data of the country. Why wouldn't he have a greater understanding? Do you seriously think understanding derived from peasant hearsay can match the rigorous economic analysis with data on hand? I am sure that if that data was openly available to everyone, then anyone could spend several days analyzing it and would end up drawing the same conclusions. However, this is a world without mass information, so how exactly would that exact data be distributed? And even if the data was distributed, would you really expect everyone to spend days analyzing it? Do you often analyze economic statistics of your industry? Also, apparently being able to read and count is a problem in this country, so what exactly would they do with the data?

It is one thing to hear that cotton is the new gold and buy into the notion. It is another to realize that the food shortage is your personal responsibility and changing to cotton was a mistake. It is yet another to act to correct your mistake (possibly writing off the already-grown cotton as a loss).

Ultimately, there are plenty of allowances you could make for the narrative that would allow it to make perfect sense. If "trying to understand the narrative as making reasonable sense" is your motivation, then you should be ready to make those allowances instead of complaining that "the show didn't explicitly tell me that".

MugenNoShirayuki said:


You are ignoring the fact that this information was ALREADY centralized, by the kingdom, prior to the MC even showing up. And the king was already aware that there was a food shortage. The king and his advisors had access to all the information that the MC did. It wasn't like this is the MC bringing in some future production method or economic theory that no one in this world would have heard of, this is introductory economics. That no one prior to the MC looked over this information and drew the same conclusions breaks the suspension of disbelief.

And, as you said, the purpose of switching to cotton was to make money... but the farmers were not making money on cotton! Presumably, as cotton is a major export, the king would pay the farmers for their cotton harvest and then try to sell the cotton to neighboring kingdoms (it's not like farmers would have their own exporters). Then why would the king continue paying major prices these farmers would demand if he could SEE that cotton wasn't making money? It forces us to swallow the idea that the king would continue to put a premium on cotton while it was crashing, which, again, breaks the suspension of disbelief because it doesn't take a genius to realize that "cotton not making money" + "food shortage" = "ask farmers to start making food".

Abredon said:

Replace "King" with "Nobles". In a Feudal Society the Nobles own the land and have serf farmers work the land.

The Nobles got the money from the Cotton, bought food with half the money and pocketed the rest.

When things went bad, they still kept the money from the cotton sales, but rather than buying food, complained about lack of food.

This is a typical scenario still used today by Capitalists - when a "get rich" scheme (like subprime mortgage aggregation) fails, demand a bailout from the government (and any additional regulation to prevent future problems will eventually be repealed by"deregulation brings prosperity" politicians).

And this switch from food to cotton was a historical occurrence in the pre-civil war Southern USA plantations, including the later economic troubles (caused by a large number of factors).

MugenNoShirayuki said:


But his solution doesn't address the nobles, and it's never brought up. He went over the finances, if there was misappropriation of funds he would have noticed it, and he never mentions that he did. If cotton was still making money, then that money would GO somewhere, and that would be something that would become evident in the financial reports. But nowhere does he mention that the nobles are stockpiling money and not buying food, he says specifically that cotton is just not making money; so there is no money for the nobles to pocket. This is what I mean with centralization. Your explanation makes sense in a feudal society like OUR medieval history, but this world has already implemented centralization in its economic system and the king and his advisors have knowledge of all financial reports, and nowhere is that problem outlined by the MC. He identifies it explicitly as a supply and demand problem, where demand got outpaced by the supply and the market crashed.

MugenNoShirayuki said:


Nothing in this episode suggested that was even remotely the case, the MC laid all the blame on the farmers.

MugenNoShirayuki said:
But his solution doesn't address the nobles, and it's never brought up. He went over the finances, if there was misappropriation of funds he would have noticed it, and he never mentions that he did. If cotton was still making money, then that money would GO somewhere, and that would be something that would become evident in the financial reports. But nowhere does he mention that the nobles are stockpiling money and not buying food, he says specifically that cotton is just not making money; so there is no money for the nobles to pocket. This is what I mean with centralization. Your explanation makes sense in a feudal society like OUR medieval history, but this world has already implemented centralization in its economic system and the king and his advisors have knowledge of all financial reports, and nowhere is that problem outlined by the MC. He identifies it explicitly as a supply and demand problem, where demand got outpaced by the supply and the market crashed.

MugenNoShirayuki said:
I assume it has centralization because the MC has all the information he needs about the state of the economy after three days. Where did the MC collect all this data from, if there was not already a centralized system in place to collect it? How were the people who went over this data beforehand SO incompetent that they couldn't make the obvious connection between "all our farmers are making cotton" and "cotton is not making money"? Again, this is BASIC stuff. When dealing with products in the quantity implied here (an entire country's worth) there needs to be some form of distribution outside of the kingdom. And as we saw, all this information was available to the MC, so he got it from SOMEwhere. And what he did with that information was form a very, very basic conclusion about what to do that anyone with even a cursory knowledge of supply and demand would be able to understand and come up with themselves. So I do not find it believable that he was the ONLY person who could have made this connection, no.

malMaxi said:

Collecting data is not the same as processing it. Processing data also requires a group of people that both are aware of specific theories and are able to do things like accounting. Do you think anyone without any education can just sit down and do proper accounting? Did you try it yourself even once? This is a profession taught in a university for years. Not an easy profession to learn, either. If you want to talk BASICS, well double-entry bookkeeping is BASICS. Does any of the viziers in the show look like they know what that even is, much less how to properly do it?

If you are saying that someone already performed the economic data analysis in the kingdom, then i'll fire back with your own "we are never shown that". We do not see any economic analysis department. We do not see a university training accountants. We see basically just one halfway competent vizier doing whatever he can to keep things together.

It is not enough to just make the connection. I am sure the vizier himself made the connection many times. You also need to be able to act on that connection, which is actual effort and work. Especially if you actually need to invent the entirety of what seems like the last 10 centuries of our economic theory.

Also another thing you misunderstand. It is comparatively easy to create revenue streams out of export products. Shutting down those revenue streams, however, is liable to get you actually physically killed. Especially in middle ages. Many a king died that way, much less viziers.

I do agree that the show would be more convincing if it actually shown that last aspect. But that's about as much leeway as your position has. The rest is you apparently just not being aware of what the BASICS even are.

Bio said:
The handling seems very simplistic for the story we're trying to tell here. People are already discussing how it doesn't take a genius to see that you switch when the market does. The issue is the time to do that, which he didn't try to address. All he actually brought to that discussion was the quick mention of subsidies, which seems real difficult for a cash strapped kingdom that apparently needs to support its entire agricultural sector that just grew a close to worthless crop.

And then we have his big announcement at the end that he'll take anyone talented. Okay, you've skipped the explicit reading and writing requirement, but you can't just ignore the existing power structures. Are none of the nobles going to be bothered that there's a new path to the king's favor? And this is a feudal system. How many people even have the right or ability to travel? Are local lords going to let people leave their fields to take a trip to the capital? Oh, the king said you should come? Yes, well, I believe my whip is much closer at hand. Enforcing that decree is money, giving the rewards is money, sorting through the applicants is money.

Fantasy series ignoring a lot of the uglier elements of swords and sorcery settings is nothing new, but the more intellectual you're aiming the more it shows through the crack. Going to be a hard balance to be fun without being too unbelievable. Give it another couple to see how it manages.

MugenNoShirayuki said:
What revenue streams? There are no revenue streams, because no cotton is being sold for profit. That's what a market crash is. Cotton is not making anybody money. So who exactly is going to be killing the people shutting down these "revenue streams" that are not making anybody any money?

Furthermore, you say "you actually need to invent the entirety of what seems like the last 10 centuries of our economic theory" but that's not true. Literally all the vizier would have to do is notice that cotton is continually making less and less money, and recommend to the king that the farmers switch from growing cotton to growing food instead. At the end of the day, that's all the MC ended up doing, and the story has not sold me on the fact that HE could make that connection but nobody else would be capable of doing so. Heck, the uneducated FARMERS in this kingdom noticed that there was a greater demand for cotton and it could make them more money than food, so are you seriously telling me that no one could understand that when cotton WASN'T making money at the exact same time there was a food shortage that nobody suggested "hey, instead of making cotton, which isn't making us any money, we'll grow food instead?"

And the lack of any processing department is not a note in the show's favor, it's an inconsistency. What is the point of establishing that there is a system to collect this data, if nothing is being DONE with it? We don't see an accounting department, so let's assume for a second that it doesn't exist, fine, no issue there. But with that being the case, why are they even collecting all this data in the first place? Are they piling it up in a big room somewhere? Does the king like making paper airplanes out of financial transaction forms? People don't just collect data for no reason. So what is the point of there being a system to collect all this economic data for the country if there is no system in place prior to the MC's arrival to make use of it?

Singiu said:
This anime feels like SAO and No game no life had a child is just great a mc that is doing admin work

MugenNoShirayuki said:

I assume it has centralization because the MC has all the information he needs about the state of the economy after three days. Where did the MC collect all this data from, if there was not already a centralized system in place to collect it? How were the people who went over this data beforehand SO incompetent that they couldn't make the obvious connection between "all our farmers are making cotton" and "cotton is not making money"? Again, this is BASIC stuff. When dealing with products in the quantity implied here (an entire country's worth) there needs to be some form of distribution outside of the kingdom. And as we saw, all this information was available to the MC, so he got it from SOMEwhere. And what he did with that information was form a very, very basic conclusion about what to do that anyone with even a cursory knowledge of supply and demand would be able to understand and come up with themselves. So I do not find it believable that he was the ONLY person who could have made this connection, no.

Abredon said:


What makes you think it's only been 3 days?
It was 3 days alone before the king abdicated and the MC became king.

Then the time before Liscia learned of the change and arrived back at the castle. By then he had arranged the sale of the jewels and received the money. No airplanes, trains, or automobiles, so that happened by horse, taking at least a few days.

It has been at least a day after that.

So it has been at least a week that the MC has been looking into the problem, and more likely 2 to 3 weeks, if not more.

The first thing he would have looked into after getting initial revenue would be the farming situation. The Nobles have to provide reports to the crown, and the kingdom will have spies and inspector reports too. Cross referencing those would quickly reveal the situation.

No centralization necessary, just normal Feudal era tax records and intelligence reports.

MugenNoShirayuki said:


Tax records and reports to the crown ARE centralization. The kingdom is gathering all their economic data in one place, aka centralizing it. As you said, all this information was already available to the crown, so the notion that with that data (which apparently people were collecting, but no one was actually going over) only the MC could understand the problem at hand and how to fix it strains credulity.

Abredon said:


Then centralization dates back to the dawn of writing. Such records (tally sticks) were the very first writing invented. And yet, these VERY types of problems occurred under many governments.

That is NOT centralization. Centralization is when the central government itself controls, monitors, and directly manages all the reports.

In Feudalism the lesser Nobles (knights/barons) manage and report to higher Nobles (earls/dukes), who collect, revise, and report to the King. At each stage, there is opportunity for deception, so the King has spies and investigators checking some of the reports (there is never enough staff to verify every report). Since these spies and investigators may be corrupt, there may be other spies/investigators checking on them.

The documentation available to the King is suspect, and the King cannot dictate what to produce EXCEPT on Crown lands (directly held by the King).

The Nobles as a whole often have more power than the King, and can force actions (see the history behind the Magna Carta for more information about that)

And you haven't yet seen the solution the MC comes up with.

MugenNoShirayuki said:


You don't seem to understand what I mean by centralization. What I'm referring to is the fact that the king gathers all the information from his kingdom together and has authority over it, which he does.

Even though the information travels through the individual cogs in the machine, it all collects together in the center, under the king, who has the authority to do whatever he likes with this information. Nowhere has it been suggested that this society is anything less than an absolute monarchy with the king having total authority over the running of his kingdom, at this point in the series every decision we've seen made has been made with unilateral control per the monarch with no interference from any outside party, and not even an allusion to the existence of an outside party interfering with the king's judgments per, say, a great charter of what the king can and cannot do.

The king is the one in control of the kingdom, hence why the nobles report to him. Whether there is the opportunity for deception or not in their reports is irrelevant to the fact that all the power lies in the central government of the kingdom itself. That speaks to competence of the system, not the system itself. That's why it's a centralized form of government, because all the power comes from the center and is dictated from the crown. We had it explained in this episode, there is an announcement room that can address the entire kingdom, which is used to give out edicts to the entire kingdom. So yes, the king DOES have the ability to dictate to the entire kingdom at his discretion, unless stated otherwise, and nothing has stated otherwise, or suggested that this is not the case. I'm working with the information I have available, which suggests that the king has absolute authority in his kingdom and has gathered together the financial reports as a form of medieval centralization of the economy.

Abredon said:


No the King does not gather all information (he is given a selected subset by the Nobles, and gathers a small amount via his small network).
Nor does he control anything except for his personal retainers.
He can attempt to command the Nobles, but his only official authority is to demand 30 days of service of a fixed number of troops for war.
If the King commands too much, the Nobles can revoke their oath and become their own masters again..
The Feudal oath is the vassal serves the liege to a limited extent in exchange for protection.

AGAIN, look into the Magna Carta, forced upon King John and King Henry III by the Barons.
The King has no true power except what is granted by the Nobles, and that can be withdrawn.

MugenNoShirayuki said:


Everything you mentioned is about OUR medieval history. Where is any of this stated to be the system that THIS fantasy kingdom operates on? Show me the Magna Carta for THIS medieval society, show me where we've seen any mention of these restrictions, because I don't remember them.

Abredon said:


That is a spoiler, and except as otherwise mentioned, our history is the basis of any similar structure in an isekai world.
Even Ancient China and Japan had these problems, where the ostensible ruler was effectively limited in authority. (Although China came up with a unique solution to corrupt Noblemen and bureaucrats with it's Judicial system)

MugenNoShirayuki said:


So to be clear, you're stating that I'm incorrect because I drew conclusions from the information that was presented to me, rather than rely on information that I had no way at all of knowing? I'm incorrect, certainly, I'll grant you that, but at least you could have mentioned at the beginning that it was something that would be explained later rather than state it was something I should take as true without it being established in the world already

I'm not going to go off of the assumption that an isekai society would necessarily be identical to our history. In our history, a king didn't have the capacity to address all of his subjects at once through magic sky projections. This is a society where magic is a tangible thing that exists. To assume that the same structures and restrictions of how society must function as is the case of ours is to reject any potentiality that magic would play a role in societal infrastructure. We've seen magic have countless applications to day to day life in this society already, so saying that it MUST follow the same structure of our feudal history with no evidence of that being the case is not a reasonable statement for me, who has learned nothing about the worldbuilding accept what I've already seen, to draw. Especially when there has been no hint of any of those structures in place currently and there IS evidence of magic being used as a tool of governance already, with the magic room to address every citizen in the kingdom.

Since you say that this world developed its history to be a model off of ours, I look forward to seeing the explanations as to why that is the case.

Abredon said:


No, you are incorrect because you made a fallacious extrapolation based upon incomplete information.
The show stated that except for certain things (lighting, showers, and a couple more), the world is at a state similar to our middle ages. Therefore, except for the specifically listed exceptions, you should look to our history during the middle ages.

Assuming anything not mentioned is automatically different from our world is a fallacy, and directly contrary to the introduction of episode 2.
The magic broadcast was stated to rarely have been used - basically only for once a year announcements.