[Graveyard Duck]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

If what you said is true, then those decision makers in central country won't be smart enough to "buy security" by providing the southern countries with many kinds of resources to fight the demons. That alone is (once again) a solid prove that (at least) those people in the central know the "big picture". Even the Demon King herself said that the "Human Kings" apparently know that ending the war will only make things worse (poverty, famine, etc). and that's from episode 1 alone.

Seeing the effects of the war does not necessarily mean the party sees the "big picture." The merchants are the most obvious examples: They have accounts of their profits before the war, and they have accounts of their profits during the war. A comparison of the books will show them that the war has benefited them, but it does not imply that they are aware of macroeconomics.

The rulers view the effects of the war on a larger scale, but that also does not necessarily mean they see "the big picture." Take the rulers of the Winter country, for example. They are aware of food shortages before the war, and they are aware of the lack of food shortages during the war. They are also aware of the funds from the Central Nations. They can easily predict from the comparison the sort of consequences that would result from ending the war now.

These are comparisons that real world medieval rulers and merchants can make. However, macroeconomics as an organized predictive study did not really occur until the 17th century or later. The theories of macroeconomics, while often wrong, allow for predictions of long term consequences. For example, it is fairly simple for the Central Nations to see that it is buying security by aiding the Winter country, but what is the long term consequence of taxing your population then shipping the taxes out to another country to be destroyed in a war? I believe Kaynesian economics predict a short term increase in economic activity and significant inflation in the long term--reasonable to see as only beneficial in the 15 year interval the series postulated for the war but problematic in the long run.

In that sense, I agree with kuromitsu's initial assessment: The Demon King is the only one who really grasp macroeconomics as a predictive study.

That being said...

Originally Posted by kuromitsu

The impression I got from episode 1 is that the Demon King is the only one who has any idea about economy, and everyone else is either an idiot or a stupid, greedy warmonger. Which is would be pretty boring and annoying, not to mention unrealistic.

I disagree with the assertion that the series would be fundamentally uninteresting because the Demon King is the only one with a grasp of an advanced social theory. One approach would be to make a series of how the person chooses to force the world to implement her methods where no one of consequence has a grasp of the theory. Take the first book in Foundation as an example: One of the two postulates of psychohistory is that the subject of psychohistorical study does not know psychohistory. Thus, the interesting conflict of that part of the story comes with how the psychohistorians manipulate an imperium that thinks they are kooks. Here in Maoyu, the Demon King leaves her throne to travel with the Hero so she can reach the human world. By doing so, she relinquishes the possibility of tight control over the demon world. And she did not ever have control over the human world. Thus, Maoyu's setup allows it to show us how the Demon King intends to implement her plans.

Another approach is to tell a story of how the person would choose her starting conditions and modify her methods based on real world observations. In this case, the adventures through the world gives the audience a first hand view of the conditions the theory is meant to grasp and the difficulties with which it must deal. In this approach, Maoyu is both more and less advanced than Prelude to Foundation: less in the sense that macroeconomics is far less comprehensive than psychohistory, more in the sense that macroeconomic formulas are already in place, while psychohistory has only been proven to be possible in Prelude.

In some ways, the Demon King and the Hero remind me of a gender flipped version of Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili, where it's the female that is the strong protector and the male the more intellectual. Although in this respect Maoyu is a bit lacking, because Dors is an accredited historian, while the Hero is essentially all brawns.