 Corporate Law - Aztech law?, what is it all about? |
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 Sep 3 2007, 02:30 AM
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#26
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Running Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,288 Joined: 4-September 06 From: The Scandinavian Federation Member No.: 9,300  |
I've always imagined the AAAs being banks as well as whatever else they do. Where do you get the impression that citizens of nations does not exist anymore? There are fewer of them, sure, but UCAS still have a population, alot of whom are tax-paying citizens. There is still politics, and there are still voters and a pitiful attempt at democracy. I expect that the extraterritory is rented as well, and is a major scource of income for the government. UCAS is a fairly new nation, and I expect the only reason they merged with canada was because otherwise USA would as you say collapse as people stopped beliving in them and their money. As of now they do have an army that can threaten it's neighbours and any corps doing business in UCAS. As do the Indian nations and Aztlan. Remember, there are extremely small nations in the world today that still has a currency, so there are room for many nations inside the american continent and UCAS has enough citizens to support it. It's been pretty much stable for 30 years now hasn't it? Still the US dollar isn't worth much and the nuyen is most accepted currency. |
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Sep 3 2007, 02:43 AM
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#27
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,650 Joined: 21-July 07 Member No.: 12,328 |
Well, the other cornerstone of the banking system is trust, which is why banks are heavily regulated. I doubt anyone is picking through the books for an AAA corps - who the heck is an auditor anyway? How can an independent auditor function in a world which is seriously funding illegal black operations? Maybe it's a line item 'Operations against ares: 2.4 million dollars' All my questions about debt still stands - maybe people just work without it - or corp scrip is just outstanding junk bonds issued by the corp? As for the citizen question. If workers are indetured servants (as outlined here) and you can actually be an ares citizen (which you can) why are any employees of ares not ares citizens. Once you accept that, who the heck is actually an UCAS citizen? Even the public service has been outsourced and are likely to be corp citizens. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:17 AM
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#28
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
There are no banks?
Two of the AAAs are major banking powers. Second only to the ZOG Bank, Saeder-Krupp owns Dresdner Bank, the Commerzbank, the Swiss Bank Corporation, Lothian-Vaea PLC, and Nippon Credit and Trust. Wuxing is S-K's Asian counterpart, owning Wuxing Financial Services, the Prosperity Development Corporation, Albion Mutual Funds, Fidelity, the Banks of Vienna and Hong Kong, and the Malaysian Independent Bank. Ares is known to own Bank of America as well as other unnamed banking institutions. Aztechnology owns BANCOMEXT, a major financial player in South America. Renraku owns the Champion Financial Group, which includes GloBank and Temperance Investments. MCT and Evo both have considerable financial assets which have not been formally named, but are probably located in Japan and Russia. In Europe, Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bernal and Frankfurter Bankverein round out the three major European banking powers with Saeder-Krupp. But there are other independents, like the PanEuropa Bank. The Pacific Rim Bank is the major clearinghouse for the Japanacorps and the most powerful banking institute in the Japanese Imperial State. Citibank still exists as an independent banking institution based in Manhattan. It's very likely the ZOG Bank, through its close partnership with the Corporate Court, regulates the banks. It's also very likely that the megacorps keep their banking divisions at arm's length so they don't get tangled up in the corporations' other operations. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:20 AM
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#29
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
Actually, no. In order for labor to be considered voluntary then it must be voluntary at the time it is preformed. Even if an employee voluntarily enters into an employment contract, the employee has the right to refuse to perform any labor. Specific performance is not a valid remedy for refusal to perform labor. This is why many labor contracts contain financial penalties for their violation. No American court can force a person to perform any work in accordance with a contract. However, the Thirteenth Amendment contains several implicit exceptions. You have to do some intellectual gymnastics to see them, because they aren't actually implied by the text but are, instead, implied by facts and circumstances completely unrelated to the Amendment. Needless to say, these exceptions are implied and do exist. The implicit exceptions to the Thirteenth Amendment that have been confirmed and verified by the Supreme Court all involve traditional compulsory public service. The first exception is the most obvious, jury duty. If the Thirteenth Amendment applied to compulsory jury duty then the constitutionally guaranteed right to a trial by a jury of one's peers would be negated in fact. Either there would be a huge shortage of jurors or there would become a class of professional jurors who made a living deciding trials. Both possibilities are unacceptable under the Constitution and since we can assume that the framers of the Thirteenth Amendment did not intend to produce to impair the function of the judicial system or nullify unrelated provisions of the Constitution, this exception must be implied. The second exception is military service. If the Thirteenth Amendment were applied to military service then the military chain of command cannot stand. Not only would desertion be permissible, but all lawful orders would be unenforceable. This could easily lead to a complete breakdown of military discipline. Under such circumstance it would be impossible for a military to function. Since we must assume that the framers of the Thirteenth Amendment did not intend to completely neutralize the the military we can an exception is implied. The same reasoning follows in the case of forcible military conscription. The contract signed by military personnel has nothing to do with this. The contract is, in fact, meaningless. The third exception is road construction. Traditionally, the construction and maintenance of local public roads has been carried out by local conscripts. Individuals would get a notice that they were required to appear for road work, similar to a jury duty notice, and they'd go off and build a road. This traditional civic duty is also an exception to the Thirteenth Amendment, though it is rarely used today. Of course, these exceptions only apply to traditional civic duties, not to private employment. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:23 AM
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#30
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Deus Absconditus Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,742 Joined: 1-September 03 From: Downtown Seattle, UCAS Member No.: 5,566 |
I agree with DE's take on it. A similar chart of top 10 firms in the world would probably give a similar read to the ones above, and wouldn't list AAAs directly. It'd list their banks, because that's where they keep their money and other assets. It just depends on how you define 'top 10' is all. If you define top 10 as "Sits on the Corporate Court," you'd get a very different picture. Never forget, just because right now not all huge corporations own banks doesn't mean that they won't in 2070.
And, check out Japanese economic history sometime for an interesting lesson in Zaibatsu, bank ownership, and how you can mask finances and company ownership. Also, Hyz... Check out pretty much all prison labor activities. It's a lot more than road work these days, but the idea is the same. In prison = slave labor is allowed. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:28 AM
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#31
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,650 Joined: 21-July 07 Member No.: 12,328 |
So how is debt issued? And if a *corp* goes under are the banks assets liable? If all the corps own the banks, who do they borrow money off? Why do they borrow? Who buys the debt? Secondly, banks, mutual funds, etc typically invest in other players. as the AAA mega corps are the closest thing to 'blue chip' does this mean that the corps all own each other? It seems absurd, because that means that SK is lending money to itself and then re-buying the debt.. of itself. or do the corps all own each other? Edit: The AAA corps in the book are clearly described as massive conglomerates with diversified business interests - which means that they are all General Electrics. so they are clearly going to be the companies listed on any top 10 chart. Their subsiduaries (the banks) won't make the list.. because they are subsidaries. Anyway, the net question is, who is auditing the black ops expense account? Anyone? Does ZO just have a bunch of audit ninjas who approve accounts of everyone on the stock exchange? Edit: I am by no means a financial services expert, just a curious bystander. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:39 AM
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#32
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Deus Absconditus Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,742 Joined: 1-September 03 From: Downtown Seattle, UCAS Member No.: 5,566 |
Let me see if I can answer your question without delving into SR specifics, Cthulhu. This goes back to my crack about Japanese economic history above. It's also another big reason that the AAAs haven't totally absconded with national control as yet. I'll try not to get too deep into the details, as much as I have a love of doing so.
1) Conglomerates like that invest in subsidiaries and the subsidiaries borrow money from the parent company. This is funded not by corporate ownership but by private shareholders, often employees of the conglomerate. 2) Debt is accrued by different branches and shuffled about from point to point, but in the end is paid for by the private/employee shareholders. 3) Back in the heyday of the zaibatsu, they would provide certain services to the government for free, in exchange for use of government funds. Kinda like a very loose government bid system. 4) The zaibatsu avoided totally shafting eachother by meeting on neutral ground with certain gov't officials arbitrating, not unlike ZOG. When a zaibatsu needed funds or investment it couldn't satisfy itself, it asked for government loans. At least once, a zaibatsu (Mitsui) sold bonds to the government. This isn't unlike the vast cash block ZOG holds for the purposes of arbitration. 5) Never forget that A and AA corps are also capable of subsidizing AAAs, thus getting themselves in the good light to be bought up or contracts written for their goods/services. Where's the Chromed Accountant when we need him? |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:48 AM
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#33
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,650 Joined: 21-July 07 Member No.: 12,328 |
This is what bugs me though. I accept that private citizens buying debt is an entirely acceptable resolution to the situation. I just don't see how they can pay in the SR environment, because they don't have any money. There are two classes of people, sinless, who cannot pay for anything because they have no identification etc etc. Substantial minority. (Someone with a *really good* fake ID who can participate in society effectively has a SIN, so lets roll on to category two) People with SINs! (Yay, real people here) This call into three classes A) Corporate employees (up to middle management) B) Senior Management C) Organised crime etc. Category A - which is the vast majority of the population and a significant proportion of the wealth, don't have any money because they are indentured workers who cannot exist outside of the corps? Or are these people actually free and empowered workers who own significant proportions of corporations and have significant freedom and wealth? The litreture portrays them as being firmly in A, overworked and underpaid. How can they possibly soak up a bonds issuance B) Can buy debt I agree, but in at least one of the books it becomes a significant problem when a senior manager in one company gets significant ownership of another. (Security manager in one corp got given a huge chunk off another corp by the Big D?) C) Err.. I suppose these people can buy debt. How many of them are there again? I have the same problem with governments as well. Unless the corps are propping them up in a big way no-one can pay any tax, because all the people with SINs are A) Corp citizens B) Corp citizens C) Don't have a declared income because they are seriously criminals. So does that mean the entire government of the UCAS is paid for by Ares and co? in which case there is no govenment - Because it clearly looks to me like they are, which rules out the getting money off the govenment, because it seriously doesn't have any either. So there is a few meaningless people in the judiciary and legislature, but the entire executive is outsourced. And the legsliature cannot do anything because it doesn't have any money aside from what the executive decides to give it. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:50 AM
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#34
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
When you get into the banking game, you quickly find that the corporations are a tangled web of ownership and money-lending. The ZOG Bank is the primary lender to AAA corporations, but the ZOG Bank is owned by the AAA corporations. The ZOG Bank is kept separate from the corps that own it. If any AAA is found to be manipulating the ZOG Bank, punishment can include an Omega Order. The punishment for corruption among ZOG bank directors is death (p. 106, Corporate Shadowfiles). The megacorps are deadly serious about the ZOG Bank being independent, because they and the world economy depends on it.
The AAAs also borrow from each other's banking institutions as well as AA and A banks. As and AAs do the same, especially since they rarely have the clout to borrow from the ZOG directly. Cross, when it was still a AAA, borrowed money from a number of small banks to try to shore up losses, until Bank of America (Ares) bought out the loans and called in favors at Frankfurter Bankverein to crush Cross. I imagine the black ops money is concealed, which the corporations have gotten very good at. It doesn't even have to be concealed that well, since all of these corporations have large security forces that they need to pay for and some of them have standing armies and intelligence services. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:54 AM
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#35
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
There are some unstated assumptions that seem to exist in SRworld. One is that Megacorp=Keiretsu/zaibatsu. "The major keiretsu were each centred around one bank, which lent money to the keiretsu's member companies and held equity positions in the companies. Each central bank had great control over the companies in the keiretsu and acted as a monitoring entity and as an emergency bail-out entity." (From Wikipedia) This is because Cyberpunk was all "Oooh, the japanese will rule us all" sillyness, as was more than a few of the alarmist articles I remember from Time magazine, etc. This was before the recession in the 90's, and the series of bank mergers caused by bad loans, demonstrated to the Japanese business community that there were other business models that produced better results. Anyhow, the banks would therefore form the core of the megacorps. The issue with this in SRworld is that one of the objectives of the Keiretsu system was that you can't do a hostile takeover due to the banks vast assets and power, which isn't what the game 'history' shows. In addition, bankers, and the accountants who run them, really like to know who the hell their customers are and prevent them from engaging in fraud, particularly fraud against the bank. So anonymous non-transparent instruments that strongly encourage fraud (read "certified credstick") are something that they would be extremely unhappy about. Because fraud is taking money from the bank, which has effective veto power on the rest of the megacorp. |
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Sep 3 2007, 03:55 AM
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#36
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
Also, the state of corporate indentured servitude is exaggerated on this thread. Corporate citizens absolutely make money and it does not even have to be in corp scrip (though corp scrip will "appear" to have more value where they live and work).
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Sep 3 2007, 03:59 AM
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#37
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,650 Joined: 21-July 07 Member No.: 12,328 |
So as a shareholder you are expected to invest in a corporation for which there is no accountability and any profit and loss statement doesn't have to have any relationship with reality. At all. I suppose that says where senior management is getting the money to buy debt issuances from - by defrauding the companies! ;) It doens;t really make sense for the blackops money to be concealed, corps are spending huge amounts on it. If they can conceal that, they can conceal,say, enron, and then their accounts statement isn;t worth the paper it is written on and anyone might explode at any moment - so no-one is going to lend anyone any money (look at the current credit crunch which is predicated on the fact that the banks are scared to lend each other money because they might have unrevealed exposure to risk. Gigangitic undeclared blacks op spending is risk) Or is ZO auditing everyone's account statements including the bit they don't want to talk about and hiding it under their hat (which is actually a fairly believable assumption) and then they just endorse the bottom line? I suppose that makes sort of sense. Anyway, on to the next problem - if the banks all seriously own each other, and the corps own the banks.. this is really really weird and I have to think about it. |
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Sep 3 2007, 04:04 AM
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#38
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
I think it's fair to assume the ZOG Bank knows a great many things that the public doesn't know about the operations of the corporations. This is another reason why the megacorps are so very, very insistent that the ZOG staffers remain independent from the corporations they originate from. |
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Sep 3 2007, 04:05 AM
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#39
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,650 Joined: 21-July 07 Member No.: 12,328 |
First up: I have to say thanks everyone for clearing some of these issues up. I'm still not entirely clear how things are supposed to work, but I have a better handle on it now! :D Money: Is there generally less trust in the world for government and corp scrips? It seems to me that there would be, because of the general extreme geopolitical instability, which may render corp or govenment scrip completely worthless. This is a problem because e-currency is widely described as 'the go' - do people have a gold trade or something instead to work with? Workers: Okay, how easy is it for me to quit a job and take another one with a different AAA megacorp? Are you likely to get situations like today when people can have worked for 7-9 different A -> AAA corps? Edit: ZO being the big audit house actually works pretty well. Especially if they don;t engage in black ops, so they can publish accounts or whatever. Have to be a trusted source. |
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Sep 3 2007, 04:15 AM
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#40
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
One also shouldn't forget that that vast majority of businesses is the world are family-owned small businesses. This has not changed in the Sixth World and this, along with smaller corps that do not have extraterritoriality, is the tax base that keeps governments afloat.
While it is difficult for small businesses to compete with megas in fields such as manufacturing and low-low prices, there are some fields where the small business are superior to megas, such as talismongering, traditional handcrafts, and pubs where everyone knows your name. Of course, family-owned businesses tend to go belly-up very quickly, but there are always more of them and some do fairly well. |
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Sep 3 2007, 04:22 AM
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#41
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,650 Joined: 21-July 07 Member No.: 12,328 |
Lots of these will be serving SINless people though and therefore they are going to be pretty much organised crime. Just pretty low grade crime (taxation fraud) I take your point though. |
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Sep 3 2007, 04:23 AM
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#42
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Deus Absconditus Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,742 Joined: 1-September 03 From: Downtown Seattle, UCAS Member No.: 5,566 |
I dunno if I'd go THAT far. I don't think there are enough SINless to support that theory.
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Sep 3 2007, 04:34 AM
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#43
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
I would love to write a Fourth Edition version of Corporate Shadowfiles, though there was a lot of criticism that CS read too much like an economics book. Strangely, it's one of my favorite Shadowrun sourcebooks. :P There will eventually be a Fourth Edition corp book and I'll see what will fit in there. What doesn't fit will probably end up on Holostreets.
Corp scrip is worse off that government currency. Government currency is at least exchanged on the global market. Corp scrip can only be exchanged by the issuing corporation or by the ZOG Bank, and the ZOG Bank only deals in exchanges in the millions of nuyen of value, and only to corporate customers.
They have the nuyen, which is the world reserve currency and is backed by the ZOG Bank. I've had a few freelancer discussions about whether the nuyen is a fiat currency or a standard-backed currency, but there's been no official details on that one way or the other. A corporate citizen can exchange their corp scrip for nuyen at one of their corporation's banks. It's just that many deal at least partially in corp scrip because it has the illusion of having more value, because the corp offers its own goods at a discount if the citizen buys the goods with corp scrip. Since a megacorporation's goods can cover the whole spectrum from housing to food to clothing to luxury items, many corporate citizens fall into the trap of using too much corp scrip and having very little in the way of assets that isn't tied to their employer. Still, nearly all corporate citizens deal in at least some nuyen, unless they are of the lowest classes of corporate citizen. Those are the folks who are truly the indentured servants. They take their pay in corp scrip which they use to buy goods from their parent corp and they have no real assets or investments.
It really depends on where you are on the corporate citizen totem pole. For those poor schmucks who are the bottom, it's very difficult. Your entire life is tied to your corp. Any corp scrip you have saved up you'd have to exchange for nuyen and it's going to be appear to be much less money. For those who don't have much to begin with, good luck starting your new life with another company. For those at the top, it's probably just as difficult, but for different reasons. You are valued talent and you've likely been retained with such nice golden handcuffs that it'd be hard to leave that behind. Your stock options haven't all vested, so you'd be losing lots of money if you left. Not to mention all those perks that the corporation has thrown your way to retain you. On top of that, the corporations are not above using dirty tricks to retain their most valuable employees. Blackmail, kidnapping family members, you name it. This is why the market for extractions is so good. Some corporations would rather kill their top talent than let the competitor have them. I think company-hopping is far less common in 2070 than today, but I'm sure it still happens. Usually in an upward direction, with people moving from A corps to AA corps to AAA corps. The bigger corporations can offer more incentives, which makes the transition less painful for the employee. They can also pay for shadowrunners for extractions easier, if that sort of thing is necessary.
I would say that the ZOG Bank likely doesn't do shadowruns. They've never been mentioned in the game as backing shadowrunners and it's too likely if they did that it would be for the benefit of one particular corporation or another, which is totally against the rules. |
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Sep 3 2007, 04:57 AM
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#44
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
Also, with all the concern about banks, keep in mind that today banking and financial services is the most fragmented market on the globe and that likely hasn't changed in Shadowrun. Citigroup may be the biggest company in the world, but it only controlled 2% of the private banking market in 2003 (from their own financial releases, slide number 11). Compare this with Starbucks, which controls 73% of the coffeehouse sales market in the United States. You can see why when megacorporate ownership is discussed, it's usually in goods and not as much in financial outfits.
Of course, this is also good for the corporations, because the more diverse the market is, the more sources there are to borrow money from without it becoming too tangled. It also protects the global economy in cases where corporations fail, which has even happened to AAAs. |
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Sep 3 2007, 05:26 AM
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#45
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
Handling the money of really rich people, which is what "Private Banking" does, is extremely fragmented because really rich people have a lot of options and often strong opinions about who can take care of their money. And just like Lamborghini and General Motors, servicing the really rich isn't something that a company that wants to be the world's largest anything tends to do well, while companies that cater to the really rich have a hard time succeeding in the mass market.
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Sep 3 2007, 05:49 PM
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#46
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,288 Joined: 4-September 06 From: The Scandinavian Federation Member No.: 9,300 |
Guys, I just want so say thank you for your posts, these have helped me get a clearer picture of the world.
The weird thing is that the more I write about a subject I wonder about the more I understand about it. |
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Sep 3 2007, 06:26 PM
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#47
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
ZOG doesn't need Shadowrunners; it has Thor shots. |
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Sep 3 2007, 07:13 PM
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#48
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
As long as Aries want it to. . . . And ZOG is a really unfortunate choice of acronym.
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Sep 3 2007, 08:34 PM
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#49
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Shadow Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 3,737 Joined: 2-June 06 From: Secret Tunnels under the UK (South West) Member No.: 8,636 |
Oh, please, please, do whatever you can to get Catalyst to let you do a revised Corporate Shadowfiles. It was one of the very best Shadowrun supplements ever produced. I loved it when I was a kid. That probably means I was an odd kid, but that book was great. Ahh, the Chromed Accountant - still my favourite shadowposter (well, maybe Bung as well). -K. |
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Sep 3 2007, 11:00 PM
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#50
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 225 Joined: 13-July 07 Member No.: 12,235 |
I'm gonna go ahead and second this sentiment. I never read Corporate Shadowfiles myself, but I sure as heck am going to now. If that's where you've been getting all your information from, Demonseed, then it sounds awesome. Let's get a 2070 version up and running! |
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