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

[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.