Salaryman ga Isekai ni Ittara Shitennou ni Natta Hanashi - Vol. 2 Ch. 19

[musicfreak12]

M shamalamaladingdong you brilliant bastard, you did it again

 

[Kaarme]

@Red225 Business is business. Many of the CEOs of big corporations are responsible for doing quite nefarious deeds (running factories/mines using child labour, causing environmental catastrophes due to ignoring proper procedures and cutting costs (the Fukushima incident was purely made possible by cutting costs), etc). Even if they happened to lose their job because of it, they still got millions as compensation due to the golden handshake. Most likely they also got simply hired by another corporation, unless they wanted to retire. Compare the pig man to those, not some tiny crooks who steal copper wire. Butayarou was personally dealing with kings and rulers.

An evil person would purposefully try to cause destruction and chaos, just for the sake of destruction and chaos. A regular neutral businessman is fine with causing destruction in the process of making profit. Making profit is the goal, not causing collateral damage. The damage simply happens as a "regrettable" byproduct. The folks stealing copper wire aren't trying to kill anyone, they are stealing metal. Like communists, they are counting on the society to promptly install new wires to fix the situation.

 

[Dezaki]

MC seized the opportunity to gain a partner/pawn after learning that the pig's network and skills are the real deal. i bet if the pig is just a total scam and full of bullshit MC would let the king execute him

 

[parkourse]

Yeah! I like this side of Pig Guy!

Go get 'em, Uchimura!

 

[arirnarukami]

yes, securing trade route in the cheapest way is the best way to get more profit , good job uchimura-san

and thanks for the translation !!!

 

[restlesssheep]

As always thanks for translating this chapter. This was interesting as hell.

 

[Nathol]

ty

 

[TNT261]

So, do you wanna explain what you saw that made you think that way or what “calamity” you expect will happen? A cryptic solemn warning is pretty worthless without any actual information. If you just tell me something “bad” is gonna, all I’m gonna say is “Okay. I can’t really prepare for anything without any information though...” (well actually I’d probably say something more like “something bad always happens. I’ve stopped caring”). I really like this series, but that cliche cryptic warning is annoying. Either give me some real ass advice or keep your mouth shut. And who the hell brings something that important up RIGHT as the person is about to leave. Like, you couldn’t have told me this earlier, BEFORE I got in my car (well carriage) to go? That way we’d have time to sit down and talk about this so I can have some clue on what’s going on (because even if the merchant himself doesn’t realize what bad thing keeps armies, if he explained in detail what he saw to the mc then the mc would probably figure it out considering their intelligence).

 

[iykoou]

Well, I know that if something like this happens in a story, there will be people that say that this is forced. I don't think so though, it's great since it shows that there's a possibility like that.

In real life, this kinda misunderstanding or whatever it's called will eventually happen. You ought to see the bigger picture before making any conclusion of anything.

 

[tremor3258]

Oh I liked how this was handled.

 

[Goldenzeal]

@Kaarme
@Red225
@panzerkampfwagyu

Good and evil are subjective and the story makes a pretty good job at pointing that out with his two nicknames as both grim reaper and saint. ( 10 / 10 manga author )
From the villager's point of view, he is stealing their stuff, but for the orphans, he is a saint who saved their lives.
Even if you make the argument that he saved them to get loyal workers down the line, it's still a good thing to do helping people survive and get jobs.
Greed and how selfish you are ultimately doesn't factor in how good or evil you are unless you act on it.

He doesn't WANT people to suffer but also doesn't care if he does hurt other people for his own benefit.
If you only want to see it as black and white, then yeah sure you can say he is evil.
Once you do anything evil no matter of good intentions or later good deeds you can never get those black stains away making you grey at best.

He still helps other people from time to time, (regardless if it was to get a good workforce that benefits him or not) I would make the argument that he is what DnD consider to be "true neutral".
( which has become a bit of a standard on the internet for these kinds of things because of its popularity )
Here is my reasoning for this...

Let's start with lawful/neutral/chaotic, In my opinion, he is clearly isn't lawful because he doesn't follow his own personal code (from what we have yet to see anyway) or the laws of others.
He also isn't chaotic because he doesn't go out of his way to eliminate all authority, harmony, or order in society( things going as planned benefits a merchant after all and he isn't a might makes right type )
This only leaves neutral as the logical option with the little information we have( this could easily change to lawful if we ever learn more of his characters' motivations, but it's unlikely to change too chaotic)

As for the meat and potatoes of this discussion... good/neutral/evil they are again, subjective.
A neutral good character does what they consider to be right and helps others regardless of others prejudice or predetermined set of rules.
A true neutral might be indifferent and doesn't care one way or the other, or they only care about themselves and/or does whatever they want because they feel like it. ( this fits him best IMO )
While a neutral evil does whatever she can get away with at the cost of others and doesn't care who gets hurt.
The reason that he won't fall into this category to me is at least appears to care for his children... even if he likely only helped them for his own benefit at first.
A Neutral evil would have no positive feelings for others whatsoever and only consider them tools to be used.
We see that he does care for his children at the end of the chapter this and the last chapter, and he helps the MC with this super vague hint at the end
( even if that doesn't really benefit him much at this point. )
So he clearly isn't heartless.

That's why I personally consider him a true neutral even if he did do some bad things.
Again good and evil is always hard to make a clearcut definition and is a greyscale where you got to draw the line somewhere.
Where that is going to ultimately be up to everyone to choose themselves.
He isn't a saint as some(like the orphans) would make him out to be, but he isn't pure evil by any means...
He is just a greedy pig asshole who cares about his family above(and at the cost of )everyone else.

 

[Kaarme]

@Goldenzeal I'm not sure why you tagged me, but I agree with what you wrote.

 

[Red225]

@Kaarme Very few people do harm simply for the sake of an ontological prerogative to cause harm. They do so because it's fun for them, or because it gets them money, or because voices in their head tell them god wills it or because they are angry at the world and beating people up or murdering them makes the anger fade a bit.

That doesn't make it a neutral act. Someone saying "Sorry that I'm murdering your entire family and nuking a city, but I got paid a million bucks to do so" and come off as a neutral person simply because he's doing it for money.
I was trying not to get into the actions of big pharma companies who have gotten thousands killed by opioid addictions, and mismanagement of Fukushima leading to an avoidable catastrophe. It's still evil. Harming innocents for your own gain is pretty much one of the definitions of evil in many places.

@Goldenzeal Under that logic a serial killer who only kills brunette women under 30 by torturing them to death in an abandoned shack in the woods while having a loving family in the city is "neutral" because he "cares for his own children" and "doesn't cause harm under all circumstances no matter what". Under that logic a person who only burns down (random nationality selected) chinese people's homes and who has a mother he loves and looks after is a neutral person because he doesn't burn down everyone's homes and he cares for someone.

Under that logic if you murder the entire universe except for your beloved dog, you're a neutral person because you didn't want to kill your own dog.

It's an asinine response; evil may be subjective, but to say "you can't be evil because you care about other people" is an foolish line of thinking. If you do evil things, you are evil. There's no morality bar in the real world. You don't get to nuke a town like in Fallout 3 and still have good karma because you gave a thousand people bottles of water. You might repent evil actions and regret them, or be useful enough to society that people will overlook your evil acts (like exactly what is happening here) but it's still evil.

Now saying "he isn't PURE evil" - that's fair. Does he deserve death? Probably not. But calling him "neutral" simply because he's not the literal embodiment of suffering is absurd.

 

[Goldenzeal]

@Red225

I think you missed a very critical part of the argument, It comes down to what those people do most of the time.
a merchant who occasionally ruins lives because it benefits him is very different from a serial killer who goes out of his way to kill people for his own enjoyment.
The pig is a war profiteer and not a murderer.

 

[derkommissar]

There's no profiteering like war profiteering.

 

[Kagenashi]

"poorly executed"

It was handled really good.

 

[Red225]

@Goldenzeal so it's ok to do do horrible things as long as they aren't done often? Like if you pay your taxes and live a good life, it's ok to steal just ONE car, maybe every 50 years? Or perhaps you can embezzle company funds just once every twenty years, perhaps?

Maybe slander someone on the internet and harass and eventually swat someone you would rather not see on the internet every 10 years?

If you are a righteous and morally upstanding person the rest of the time it's ok to do do one or two evil acts as long as you don't do it regularly, right?

Or, to hit closer to a real life action: it's not evil to sell flammable building materials, lie about how safe it is and cheat on safety tests, and then try to hide all of this when an entire building burns down with people inside, because normally you don't do that sort of stuff? An engineering firm has literally done exactly this when they were tasked to provide safe and secure materials to the public, leading to the preventable deaths of 80+ people in the UK. By your logic it's not evil at all to act in such a way, because... Because it's just a one off. That makes it all better, right? Neutral at worst.

 

[yamago]

Pleasantly surprised by the moral complexity here.

 

[sketches]

From bad guy to good guy in my books. Framing is always important, sneaky author.

 

[BitterMatte]

BAD CHOICE, merchant is not a good person he takes advantage of others misfortune in war to buy low and sell high.
Also his "rescued" children are just cheap labor , actually stealing for him, and in this case an item that protected crops of villagers. Villagers already having food issues, so taking them into a famine.