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Yeah, it always annoyed me that the elders in Naruto are respected simply for being old.
In my experience, Asian people generally respect their elders, but not to that extent. Not to the point of letting their elders overrule their own good judgement, and definitely not to the point of allowing the elders to hold that much political power.
It's a social respect. Not a "I will let you send me to my death" respect.
How do they manage to actually overrule Hiruzen so often?
Is it they survived? A lifetime of accumulating political favours?
Is it just that they're a plot device so he doesn't look like a bad guy? (My personal opinion, honestly)
Add that to how I did world building so that the government of the village actually cares for the shinobi in their village / clans - because these guys are basically your most valuable and highly trained resource and why would you throw them away carelessly? Also, they're FAMILY! - and I suddenly had a whole bunch of elderly shinobi to play around with plot wise.
So I wanted to play with the veneration of age in the shinobi world by giving them lots of retirement roles that they can hold until death.
Civilian style jobs that don't require them to be as spry as they'd need to be a combat role, but will still allow them to contribute to the village and support themselves if they wish.
Of course, they can always retire to leisure and live with their kids who will support them in the traditional Asian social structure for the period if they prefer that option instead.
But - like you said - I wanted them to have options.
This [chapter 30 of The World Building of Escape and Evade] isn't the only one either.
They can also go into the Diplomatic Service, village administration, use their ninjutsu to do farming or weather control, run shops that offer household chores / products (suiton users who do laundry! ration users who sell batteries!), or Recon - especially in the long term surveillance section. Recon is always looking for more kind and genial Obaachan and Ojiisan to run their bathhouses / ryokan / tiny bookshops / tiny tea shops / tiny knick knack shops or simply publicly sit in the sun and bother the young with questions while handing out candy.
They make great spies. 😊