GURPS: Beverly Hillbillies (or: annoyed by GURPS' handling of the nouveau riche)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

If you'll get impeached and/or arrested and/or fired for using the friendly local aircraft carrier other than in protection of USA's interests, for using your spysat to check up on your neighbor, for bringing a lover to the office on Sunday as a secrecy measure etc., you don't have any traits - you've got a job.

The thing is, we really do consider (Job with a budget of $100,000k per year and no underlings) and (Job with a budget of $1,000,000,000 per year and 10,000 underlings) to be different, and differences in status and rank largely do correspond to differences in budget. The simplest way of implementing that is to just call your budget a specialized form of wealth.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The thing is, we really do consider (Job with a budget of $100,000k per year and no underlings) and (Job with a budget of $1,000,000,000 per year and 10,000 underlings) to be different, and differences in status and rank largely do correspond to differences in budget. The simplest way of implementing that is to just call your budget a specialized form of wealth.

But why is the job budget related to personal wealth? If I get a TIE-Bomber when on the job, but can't fly it for personal use, this isn't Wealth. If I'm given it as part of an assignment, but can keep it and use it as I see fit once I go on shore leave, that's Patron with the Equipment enhancement.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But why is the job budget related to personal wealth?

Because a job-budget of $1M is less relevant if I have a personal budget of $1M than if I have a personal budget of $1k.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Because a job-budget of $1M is less relevant if I have a personal budget of $1M than if I have a personal budget of $1k.

I don't get what you mean. If the budget is still not yours to use for personal purposes, and you still have legal responsibility for messing with it or badly managing it (even if in the strictly financial sense you can immediately pay out any losses from your personal funds), I don't see what difference it makes.

[fifiste]

I think he means that if you have 1M$ pocket cash then you don't give a hoot if your company gives you a car or not. If it grieves you that you can use it only at company time etc. you can just buy one or ten or whatever.

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The thing is, we really do consider (Job with a budget of $100,000k per year and no underlings) and (Job with a budget of $1,000,000,000 per year and 10,000 underlings) to be different, and differences in status and rank largely do correspond to differences in budget. The simplest way of implementing that is to just call your budget a specialized form of wealth.

But modeling the whole thing as a specialized form of wealth to replace Rank isn't good if we consider a job with a budget of $100M a year and 10,000 underlings meaningfully different from a job with a budget of $100M a year and 100 underlings. Which I think we should, especially if the budget is largely discretionary within the scope of the job except that the underlings can't be arbitrarily dismissed without cause or replaced on a whim.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by cmdicely

But modeling the whole thing as a specialized form of wealth to replace Rank isn't good if we consider a job with a budget of $100M a year and 10,000 underlings meaningfully different from a job with a budget of $100M a year and 100 underlings.

I don't; if I only have 100 underlings, it either means I'm not spending as much of my budget on underlings, or I'm spending on higher value underlings.