Line #15 Headscratchers/CControl


1	[[foldercontrol]]
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3	[[folder:Losing Deals and Midas Money]]
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5	* If the effect of losing Deal is everything you purchased with Midas Money will be gone, why not not using Midas Money at all?
6	** Because that doesn't appear to be how it works. You're betting your future. You do not lose what you bought with the money, you lose a portion of your future. For the people who spent money? They lose what it gave them. For people who didn't/ don't have enough to lose? It takes more. As can be most clearly seen when Yoga fails a class, despite the fact that there's been absolutely no change in his lifestyle from the money.
7	** If someone wouldn't use Midas Money at all, then they wouldn't become an Entre in the first place.
8	* Also why '''erase''' it? That's a terrible waste. Wouln't it be more profitable for Midas Bank to actually own it?
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10	[[/folder]]
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12	[[folder:Weight Gain]]
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14	* Could Kimimaro's asset gain weight from eating too much ramen?
15	** Well, she ''burns'' a lot of energy fighting battles. So, I doubt it.
16	** Puns about burning aside, unlikely. Assets don't need food and hence also don't do nature's due unlike humans. In keeping with the theme of the show, it is most likely that anything an Asset would take it will literally just disappear.
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18	[[/folder]]
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20	[[folder:Yoga's Father and Bankruptcy]]
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22	* What did Yoga's father lose when he went bankrupt?
23	** Possibly [[spoiler: his wife. Or [[ComesGreatInsanity his mind]]. Either would have [[DrivenToSuicide driven him to suicide]].]]
24	** That, or [[spoiler:Kimimaro used to have a sister]].
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26	[[/folder]]
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28	[[folder:Asset/Entre Lights]]
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30	* I know that the ten points of light in an Asset represents their stock. But what does the ten points in light of the Entre represent?
31	** Actually looking closer at the ten lights inside the Assets, they look like one of the diagrams of Yggdrasil. (As seen in Episode 10 Jenifer's Asset has this)
32	*** Or the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sefirot]].
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34	[[/folder]]
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36	[[folder:Paying Back Your Loan]]
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38	* If you enter the Financial District and are given the initial start-up loan with your future as collateral, why doesn't anyone attempt to pay back the initial loan after doubling it or more? Theoretically, this would allow you to use the Financial District without further risk, even if you lose a deal or go bankrupt.
39	** Ignoring the fact that the Midas Bank doesn't play fair, you'd also have to return your Asset.
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41	[[/folder]]
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43	[[folder:Giving Away Assets]]
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45	* If someone who goes bankrupt has lost their future, how can their Asset still be functional if someone else has it?
46	** My (speculative) interpretation is that it becomes a "possibility" for the new owner - like how Sennoza describes wins and losses in Episode 6. The bankrupt entré still loses their future, but Midas Bank repossesses the money from the sale, rather than what's left of the future itself (which has already been sold off).
47	** Like most lenders, the Midas Bank doesn't get everything if a debtor goes belly-up, they get what the debtor has left. In RealLife, something like Jennifer's gift of her Asset to Kimimaro would be subject to a "claw-back" in bankruptcy court (you don't get to give away assets right before declaring bankruptcy), but the rules of the Financial District are different. Of course, as far as the Midas Bank is concerned, that's just delaying the inevitable, since the Asset will eventually end up in the hands of someone who goes bankrupt.
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49	[[/folder]]
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51	[[folder:Economics of the Ending]]
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53	* Economics question: Kimimaro essentially saved the Japanese economy with a ''currency devaluation''. Isn't devaluing the currency to pay your own bills exactly what Mikuni was doing?
54	** To me the main difference (aside from the obvious cost of deliberately pawning future possibility for cash) was that, as per his discussion with his inner circle in Episode 9, he was trying very hard to hide the fact that he was bloating the money supply (although some inflation still occurred, obviously). In contrast, Kimimaro, Jennifer and Takedazaki used their currency to ''deliberately'' destroy confidence in the yen - not to pay their own bills, but to make their bills a moot point.
55	** I assumed, considering, that Kimimaro/Jennifer were using DOLLARS as their currency. Plus, they didn't have as much money tied up in the economy as Mikuni. And, thirdly...the SOURCE was different. (Real world money, not Midas money).
56	** If we're talking about economic analogy, Mikuni was using deficit spending--costing the "future" of the country. The hyperinflation was monetizing the debt. This is arguably the best solution when a nation has truly gone bankrupt. You don't have that option for places like Greece because they don't have control over their own currency.
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58	[[/folder]]
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60	[[folder:Reversing the Mint]]
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62	* What happened at the end? If all they had to do to restore the future was run the mint in reverse, why wasn't the plan to just sell the future when C comes, then reverse the mint when it's over? Why did C bounce off America? Why did it pass through Japan? What will happen to the place it hits next? Is everyone going to learn from Japan's example and copy them?
63	** The C passed through America because it has its own, extremely powerful Financial District, and was able to largely ignore the effects. The C is a metaphor for a worldwide recession, so Japan (and any other countries it hits) will dry up faster.
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65	[[/folder]]
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67	[[folder:Passing on a Deal]]
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69	* If you pass on a deal, you lose half of your fortune. You need this money because it helps you win deals. Why not just pass every time?
70	** You still have to fight at least once a week.
71	** Entres spend Midas Money in the real world too. Also, at some theoretical point in the future you'll be down to one yen.
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73	[[/folder]]
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75	[[folder:Teleportation]]
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77	* You can teleport in the Financial District. Do you have to leave where you entered? Could you just start a courier service where you use the Financial District to send packages around the world with ease?
78	** In theory? Probably. But the Midas Bank probably wouldn't allow it.
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80	[[/folder]]
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82	[[folder:Flations]]
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84	* Do the flations have anything to do with the economic concepts they're named after?
85	** Occasionally they do: "Pac-Man Defense", "White Knight" and "EBO" actually mirror their namesakes fairly well (an attack from behind during a hostile takeover, a friendly investor, and employees gaining control of the company) and a few others are close if you're creative, but for the most part the names are just chosen thematically (a "Scorched Earth" policy has nothing to do with fire and is actually a self-sacrificing defensive strategy) or just because they [[RuleOfCool sound cool.]]
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87	[[/folder]]
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89	[[folder:Mikuni's Plan]]
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91	* Mikuni was propping up the economy by buying Japan's debt with Midas Money. Isn't the result pretty much the same as if Japan payed the debt by printing money or raising taxes?
92	** Yes. You need to understand that the entire series is an austerity AuthorTract, where debt is always bad, and creating more debt (which is what Mikuni was doing, by using loaned money to buy up the debt) is even worse. That's...not quite how economics really works, as evidenced by the fact that Japan has a relatively strong economy (compared to the rest of the world) despite its massive debt.
93	*** That's not really a valid argument. Japan's economy has been in a deflatonary crisis for 30 years now and it's economy is basically collapsing into itself. The real wage of workers decreases every year (I think cumulative real wage is 85%), business cannot increase the price of products without massive resistance from the population (garigari's increase of 10 yen in price, which would be basically 9 cents, comes to mind. The CEO had to make a public apology for the fact that they did not manage to keep the same price for products for 25 years and had to increase it), GDP crashed hard (1 trillion dollars in just 12 years, 18.2% of their GDP in that time), and the 2008 crisis did not help things along, to say the least. The government can't even begin to try and revert this process. When this series came out japan was struggling, hard. And in the years after the series came out, their GDP crashed hard again (almost 2 trillion dollars lost). They barely started to recover and now covid just punted their economy into an active volcano. So I'm not quite sure where do you get that they have a "strong economy"
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95	[[/folder]]
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97	[[folder:Midas Money conservation]]
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99	* Is Midas Money conserved in a deal? It doesn't sound like it from the description. When they talk about one entre losing money, does that mean it just goes to the other entre?
100	** Some of it goes to the other entre if the diagrams in the background are right. But the money they use for the flacions goes to the bank.
101	[[/folder]]
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103	[[folder:Gaming the Deals]]
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105	* Why don't people give someone else all but one yen before a deal, and have them give it back through buying a share of their asset once the deal starts? That would ensure that anything short of bankruptcy would count as victory.
106	** [[ObviousRulePatch The bank would probably change the rules]].
107	** If the two entres are colluding, the way they do that is to choreograph the fight so that neither of them loses heavily (and Mikuni covers incidental losses and expenses).
108	** Also, you're looking at a simple Prisoners Dilemma situation. What would be stopping the receiving Entre to just keep the money then kick the giving Entre in the teeth, when the giver can't hit? And even if the giver does do a sell and is picked up by someone else, then that can only work for so long, and the receiver still has a huge chunk of additional money they can essentially burn on attacks for "free". And given that you usually have no reason whatsoever to trust this person, and the sheer cost of losing, it's a bad strategy.
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110	[[/folder]]
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112	[[folder:Information Broker]]
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114	* Why does the information broker act crazy? That is not generally a good way to ensure confidence.
115	** ...because he's crazy.
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117	[[/folder]]
118
119	[[folder:Draw?]]
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121	* What happens if neither entre does anything during a deal and it ends the way it starts?
122	** It would probably be considered a double loss, and both entres would lose half their money as if they passed (which they did, basically). This is why Jennifer tries to keep her wins and losses to a minimum (i.e. around 51-49).
123	** Likewise, that seems to be what Mikuni's group do when they fight each other. The fight's choreographed and nobody takes much damage.
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125	[[/folder]]
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127	[[folder:Where does the money come from?]]
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129	* Where does the money the entres are loaned at the beginning come from? Are the mints running constantly for this?
130	** In all likelihood, yes. Real life mints have to run pretty much constantly just to account for lost or destroyed money. Midas has no problem with injecting cash into their economy at random intervals. Or maybe that's why they choose new entres: A large amount of cash has been lost for whatever reason (suicide by someone with money left over, for example), and they need more quickly.
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132	[[/folder]]
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134	[[folder:Mint in reverse]]
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136	* How were they feeding Midas Money back into the mint? Was it just taking money from everyone?
137	** That was the implication, yes. They were destroying all of Japan's Midas Money.
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139	[[/folder]]
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141	[[folder:Midas Money Meaning]]
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143	* I'm no economics major, so help me out here: conceptually speaking, what's even so ''special'' about Midas money? I mean, I get it that the collateral is people's futures but on a fundamental level, why is introducing Midas money into the economy in any way whatsoever different from just printing large amounts of regular money? It's not like losing regular money doesn't, effectively, cost people their futures. I'm trying to understand why the existence of Midas money is significant in the first place from a "narrative" or "thematic" viewpoint. Practically speaking, why does Midas money represent anything other than, for that matter, "governments aren't really responsible for real-world hyperinflation because they can't account for how much of the money in the economy was actually from Hell
144	* Thinking about it, isn't Midas money basically just very good counterfeit money? I mean, how is it even introduced into the system? Is it registered anywhere? Governments keep track of every bill. If it is, it's no different than just regularly printed government money, and if it isn't all it hypothesizes is that someone can make very good counterfeits (and how would they even affect the economy on such a scale when they aren't legally part of it?)
145	** Midas Money is not counterfeit because it is enforced by an entity more powerful then the government. Thus, the government recognizes it. Furthermore, that is, in fact, the theme. Printing large amounts of regular money, or 'borrowing' it from another source that one cannot pay back? Is a very, very bad idea. That borrowing is, in fact, sacrificing your future. (As, in said future, you have to pay it back). You sacrifice gains in the future, for gains in the present.) It's also tied heavily into the Lost Decade...where bad loans led to Japan's economy collapsing, that it STILL hasn't recovered from literally 30 years later.
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Context Headscratchers / CControl