 So we all know who the best straw hat is with handling money, but who do you think the worst is? Well, this may surprise you, but it's actually Robin, who has this very nasty addiction to purchasing subscribe buttons for the Grand Line Review, which to be fair, does give her regular One Piece content uploaded straight into her YouTube feed. However, she only needed to buy one for that. And also she didn't need to buy it. It's perfectly free, so click the button. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, a source for everything One Piece and today we are going to be heading deep into the realm of economics. And quite specifically, understanding the economics of One Piece. Now I know that economics might not be a particularly appealing term for a lot of you, but stick with me here because when applied to One Piece, we have some really fascinating and surprising stuff to talk about. And you know, if it helps entice you to this topic, then every time I mention economics or money in general, just picture this dollar bill with a bikini. Yeah, I thought that might take your interest. As it turns out, economics can indeed be sexy. But basically in case you're unaware, economics is a study of wealth and how wealth moves among society. And we are going to begin our journey by attempting to identify what type of economy the One Piece world operates in. Which given that the large majority of the planet is united under the world government, we can safely say that the world is predominantly a mixed economy, a combination of government spending and free market systems. And I know lots of words there. But basically this means that the world government can control production of certain goods and institutions. Meanwhile, random morons like say Wapol can also rise out of nowhere to become wealthy businessmen thanks to accidentally discovering a new type of metal that the global marketplace rewarded him with. And now he's a king again. Hooray for capitalism. And I should say that this system will vary amongst individual kingdoms, especially those with a more, how shall we say, archaic system of government, like say the Goa Kingdom, or especially those who are not aligned with the world government, like say Wano, both of which could probably be more accurately described as planned economies. But for the sake of very general simplicity, we're going to call the world of One Piece a mixed economy. So that's nice. But how does this whole thing function? Well, global trade tends to operate on a single currency known as the ever-delicious berry, also known as bellies, I suppose. Doesn't really matter which one you use. But I'm going to go with berries because I enjoy eating berries. But this is a monetary system designed to mimic our modern day real world ecosystem, probably for the sake of relatability with readers and watches. Because despite the fact that One Piece takes place in a world of cyborg pirates, hiking bears and magical fruit, Oda is supremely good at inserting elements like this to make things more familiar and easy to insert ourselves into. But berries are of course a fiat system, which basically means bits of paper imbued with imaginary value. Ooh, value which is also wildly elastic. Denoting that it's exact value is liable to change in response to any number of global events. With that said, the value of the berry seems to be fairly consistent in One Piece and is very much based on the Japanese yen. So much so that to work out the exact value of a berry in your local currency, you could effectively just convert using yen as your basis. So for example, in One Piece, we have seen that the going price for a cabbage is 150 berries, which using the end conversion, ends up being about $1.40, United States dollar reduced of course. And from here on out, anytime I refer to dollars, just be aware that I mean American dollars. And admittedly, I don't know how much a cabbage costs in the US, but a dollar 40 feels just a little bit too cheap to me. However, that's not necessarily a problem, so long as the value is consistent within the One Piece world itself. And we can take other examples to help explore this, one of which is Hachan's takoyaki, which was priced at 500 berries per serving. Meaning that it would be worth about three and a half cabbages, or we could even look at the bigger picture at the estimated value of the sandaki tetsu for example, which Toshigi appraised at 1 million berries, which would be the value of well over 7,000 cabbages. So it is fairly safe to say that there is some sort of internal consistency when it comes to the value of a berry. But the more fascinating thing about the berry is that it is for all intents and purposes a global currency. We'll get into some exceptions of course, but there are at least over 170 countries in this world who trade using the berry. But in addition to that, there are also many nations not affiliated with the world government who also use the berry such as Fishman Island. Here we saw Nami visit Papag's clothing store and a clerk stated that an item of clothing was 10,000 berries, which using the rough conversion would equate to about $93. And then Nami, quite rightfully in my opinion, complained about how expensive that was, but then again criminal is a brand name outlet and that was probably to be expected. The greater point is that the dominance of the berry is such that most open nations are more or less forced to adopt it as their local currency. However, this does not apply to isolated countries like Juano, for example. Their currency is gold, silver, and platinum coins, but they only trade within their borders. Similarly, you can look at Amazon Lily because despite while Hancock being a wallet of the sea, this is a closed nation and the Kuja tribe have their own currency known as Gore. Another interesting example though would be Skypea because they are generally open to visitors from the blue sea, but they use their own currency known as X-Toll. And not only that, but they have an established exchange rate with 10,000 X-Toll being worth exactly one berry. And so if you remember the Skypea, Ark Amazon, the station master of Heaven's Gate, said that the Straw Hats needed to pay one billion X-Toll to enter Skypea safely, which is about 100,000 berries, which is roughly $930 per person, which is quite a lot, yes, but then again, international travel can be quite expensive. Also, fun fact, eventually Amazon also opened up an amusement park called Barkamu Land in honor of Usopp, who introduced the Sky Citizens to rubber bands, tickets for which are 30 million X-Toll per person, which is about 3,000 berries and $28. So that actually sounds fairly reasonable, but X-Toll is one of the rare exceptions of the one piece world, which is as stated before, dominated by the berry currency. And while one global unit might seem like a nice and simplistic idea, it actually brings a whole ton of issues with it, namely that individual nations have next to no control over their greater financial positions. So what do I mean by that? All right, let's begin a very long-winded example and say that for argument's sake, Dressrosa had its own currency. We'll call it Dofidollars. And we'll start out with the idea that it has a one-to-one exchange rate with the berry. So one Dofidollar equals one berry, splendid. But now let's say a terrible crisis-struck Dressrosa, like a mad warlord being defeated, but also practically destroying the entire nation and crippling Dressrosa's economy for the foreseeable future. Well, never fear, because they hold the power of Dofidollars. And what King Riku could do to combat this economic crap hole would be to devalue Dofidollars, essentially meaning that instead of selling one Dofidollar for every one berry, he could instead sell two Dofidollars for one berry. Now that might seem like madness at first, because ideally you'd always want the currency you're using to be strong and powerful. But what this does is make the nation of Dressrosa far more appealing because it is now much cheaper to do business there. For example, our entrepreneur, Pupug, might decide to open up a new clothing factory there and employ a whole ton of its citizens, thus bringing money into Dressrosa. And the logic behind that would be primarily because it would be cheaper to open up a factory on Dressrosa rather than to open up a second one on Fishman Island, where the berry system is still being employed. For someone considering a holiday in the new world might choose Dressrosa because it is now much cheaper and they can get more bang for their berry, thus revitalizing Dressrosa from its complete economic crash all thanks to the power of Dofidollars. Unfortunately, this is not the reality of Dressrosa though because they operate on berries and King Riku cannot artificially change the value of a berry to benefit his own country. Meaning that Dressrosa and every other nation under the umbrella of the world government is completely at the mercy of this locked financial system. So basically it's fantastic for nations that are already rich because their value is secured but for poorer countries, it severely limits their options to elevate themselves. So that means that whoever controls the value of the berry really does have unparalleled power in this world. And it's not clear exactly who or what that is because I don't think we've ever actually seen a bank in one piece, let alone a centralized bank that is responsible for global stability. So I suppose you have to assume that this task falls under the duties of the five other stars because anything that requires any degree of administration seems to fall to them. Very interestingly, we also don't know where berries come from, i.e. where they are printed or minted. Once again, I would have to assume that the world government has a dedicated centralized facility for this because the other option would be that each individual nation has their own mint to produce berries, but that is very dangerous because then what would be to stop nations over printing them and causing mass amounts of inflation in an attempt to increase their wealth in the short term. And yeah, there's just, there's many reasons why that would be a bad idea but having the supply of berries come directly from the world government is also a strange idea in and of itself. Mostly because banks don't seem to exist, so you'd have to assume that it goes directly to a kingdom's treasury. But then again, every kingdom associated with the world government is required to pay a regular tax known as a heavenly tribute. And in many cases, this tribute can cripple poor nations and leave them on the verge of starvation. So in this case, the world government would be printing money, then distributing it to kingdoms for the sole purpose that they can have that money handed straight back to them. And that sounds oddly pointless, but hey, that's the wonder of circulation. But one thing I would like to do is give us all the basic impression of just how much money might be out there in the one piece world. And we're going to do this by attempting to calculate the annual budget of the marines. And we're going to do this in a very roundabout and not at all scientifically sound way. But to begin, we need to find the average salary of an enlisted marine. And given that berries correspond strongly to Japanese yen, we are going to use the wages of a soldier enlisted in the Japanese special defense forces, which is just over 2 million yen annually for a lifelong enlistment, which is the model that the marines tend to follow. So we're going to choose that as well. Amazing, so let's assume that the annual wage of the average marine is this many berries. Now we need to find out how many marines there are, which is not at all an easy thing to determine. There is an awful lot, and the only solid number we really have is that 100,000 foot soldiers were summoned to marine foot in order to participate in the paramount war. And I need to emphasize that this is definitely not the full extent of the marines, nor is this going to account for basic pay increases as you move up the ranks. But the very rudimentary estimate of the annual cost of these 100,000 soldiers would be this ungodly number, which I think is 203 billion, 808 million berries. And that would equate to just under $2 billion. And that probably doesn't sound like a lot for military spending of such a power, but this barely scratches the surface though, because it doesn't take into account equipment like weapons, assets such as battleships, or even basic clothing because uniforms are not free. The enlisted men and women of the marines is probably by far the cheapest expense of the entire organization. But it does give you some idea of what it takes to keep an institution like the marines running. And if you work your ass like me, the annual cost of those 100,000 foot soldiers equates to about 1.3 billion cabbages. It's a lot of cabbage. And with that in mind, it might also be interesting to examine some of the higher priced items in the One Piece War, such as the Opiope No Mi, for example, which was valued at 5 billion berries. And it's actually to this day the single most expensive item that we have encountered in the series, which for the record would be about $46 million, so it is a very prohibitively expensive item. As for devil fruits in general, their average price was stated to be around 100 million berries, which would be just over $900,000. So still not an easy amount of money to come by to say the least. And while we're on that train of thought, 100 million berries was the amount that Arlong was charging Nami to buy back Kokyashi Village. So just think about how impressive that is that Nami managed to steal almost a million dollars in her career as a thief in East Blue. Devil fruits are of course sold in the underworld though, which brings up another important economic point being that this planet has a thriving black market, which sells everything from weapons to devil fruits, to quite literal slaves. All three of those aforementioned practice being primarily patroned by the world nobles, which is somewhat interesting because in theory, they're the ones who set global law. But then again, each individual nation also has its own sovereignty and laws, which is why Sabati would be the perfect epicenter of black market activity because Groves once 29 are lawless areas. So I cannot imagine the sheer amount of berries that would likely be exchanged in this area of the archipelago. But that is the bare basics of the One Piece World Economy. It is simplistic, but mostly internally consistent. And I'm sure that Oda certainly doesn't consider things too carefully when writing One Piece, but every time he places a price on something, he must at the very least briefly seriously consider it, whether it be a bounty, a sword, or a cabbage. And they also just want to give a shout out to another YouTuber named Joygo, who is surprisingly willingly engaged in a very, very long conversation with me about economics in One Piece. And there is a link to her channel in the description below if you'd like to check it out. He is a very, very new YouTuber and also comes from a land of Australia, which is always nice. But what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this, then please do go and check out some of my other content or even subscribe to the channel for more glorious One Piece business uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.