 No Governor I'm Executing You, Shows of Power |
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 Oct 3 2007, 12:32 AM
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#26
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 418 Joined: 20-September 07 Member No.: 13,346  |
Bad publicity. The Mega's have their hands in a lot of illicit trades but it's under the table so that they have deniability
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Oct 3 2007, 12:33 AM
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#27
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Uncle Fisty Group: Admin Posts: 13,891 Joined: 3-January 05 From: Next To Her Member No.: 6,928 |
Read: MCT Edit: ok that reallyt isn't very helpful. MCT does do this to an extent. They're deeply tied to the yakuza. Give Corporate Download and Underworld Sourcebook a read some time. They spell it out pretty well. Yes they have yak connectinos, and likely do some of their business through MCT. But why potentially jeopordize a businness worth many billions for one that makes many millions? |
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Oct 3 2007, 06:32 AM
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#28
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 573 Joined: 17-September 07 Member No.: 13,319 |
Dealey Plaza, Dallas-Fort Worth, November 22, 1963. Watergate Hotel, Washington DC, 2057. Assasination is a well-precedented tool readily available to corps and other organizations. But it doesn't directly result in control of territory or large populations. It works if you prefer the courses/policies the successor is likely to take, and/or you can influence the choice of the successor. The canonical SR setting involves a lot of different power relationships between nations and corps. The chief decisionmakers of Aztechnology became the chief decisionmakers of Aztlan. They didn't use orbital bombardment or pitched battles. Some arrests, some disappearances, along the way. The populace has accepted the transition. On another hand, the Japanese corps presumably have lots of influence in the Diet, but I imagine that the JIS armed forces have a lot more soldiers than all the Japanese corps combined, and that the generals hold the balance of power.... so sorry, I mean they are in favor with the Emperor. If some corporate honchos in UCAS or CAS decided to become direct rulers, well, I doubt they'd succeed, but the attempt might make an interesting story, because it might involve some initial preparatory moves with deniable assets, aka shadowrunners... for example, trying to get the rest of the corporate honchos to agree, by persuasion, blackmail, or other means. Being hired for what turns out to be a bid by Horizon for direct rulership of Calfree could lead to interesting choices. An all-out war with a united Corporate Court declaring itself the government of all Earth, dropping Thor Shots on the opposition... well, if you wanna run that story, I won't try to stop you. I don't think SR4 was written as a simulation for that scale. If you treat the great dragons, the NAN and the Tir nations as negligible factors, though, I think you're going well outside canon. |
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Oct 3 2007, 08:18 AM
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#29
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
i've thought about that, and here's what i think: MCT and the Yakuza find each other useful. the benefits to the Yaks are obvious, of course--an easy, fat market to peddle to, a well-stocked store to buy from. the benefits to MCT are many as well. ties to the Yaks gives MCT a worldwide network of semi-loyal shadow assets to call on, not just for direct actions (read: shadowruns) but also for simply keeping an eye on the shadow community. shadowrunners punch way above their weight class in terms of how they can affect corporations' bottom lines, so it's pretty handy for MCT to have ready access to the word on the strizeet. beyond that, it allows MCT a greater range of control. in the Philippines, for instance, MCT worked hand-in-hand with the Japanese government to control the population--and the Yaks were right there to exert that same control on the Filipino shadows. with MCT controlling the white market and the Yaks controlling the black, there's very little anyone can do to displace them. the Yaks don't run MCT, and MCT probably has little direct control over the Yaks. but there are a lot of ties between them that neither side wants to cut. i would guess it probably works like this: MCT management with Yak ties can use those ties to get ahead. therefore, there's lots of MCT management with Yak ties. as the MCT managers get higher in the organization, they're not likely to forget their Yak ties for several reasons. first, as described above, those ties can be very useful. second, there are lots of people who remember where they came from, even if there isn't any obvious benefit to maintaining old relationships. in this case, there is an obvious benefit, so most MCT management who rose in position due to their Yak ties will maintain those ties. |
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Oct 3 2007, 12:48 PM
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#30
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
Corporate Shadowfiles was before my time as a freelancer, but it's still one of my favorite SR books and I hope to work on a Fourth Edition version, on Holostreets if not in print. I'll have to check the books again, but I don't think the ZOG Bank is managed by the Corporate Court. I think they are two separate organizations that share an orbital habitat and are both linked to the megacorps. I think the ZOG Bank is just managed by the Directors, aka the Gnomes of Zurich. The ZOG Bank is far more independent of the megacorps than the Corporate Court is. You're right though, if all ten AAAs were all on board with some crazy idea to go crushing nations, the ZOG Bank would probably be unable to stop them. After all, the AAAs could collectively replace the ZOG Directors. But we're talking crazy, out there hypotheticals now. And in the process the megas would really piss off a whole lot of AA corps who utilize the ZOG Bank as well as just about everyone who uses the nuyen currency. It would be a corporate bloodbath. |
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Oct 3 2007, 01:21 PM
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#31
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,978 Joined: 26-February 02 From: New Jersey, USA Member No.: 500 |
I always pictured the SR universe in this regard as a very finely balanced thing in that regard - The Megas can't topple over the nations, nor the nations topple over the Megas as an institution, because if they did everything would come toppling down.
Either wouldn't Mind if the other were "eased out of the picture" - but even that would happen over generations. In the final analysis, though, the edge seems to be with the nation-state: The megas can't continue without the nation-state providing all the "backend" services, but the nation-state, while it would be wounded severely, could survive if Megas did not have extraterritoriality. The problem is, of course, that the nation-states could only shift the situation definitively, if only moderately, with concerted action - something not exactly easy. |
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Oct 3 2007, 06:36 PM
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#32
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 192 Joined: 29-December 06 Member No.: 10,483 |
Really? I was under the impression that for the top ten Megas, Nations are simply convient. Since a well run Megacorp has all the things it really, direly needs run internally. Hence why it is considered, and occasionally refered to as corperate feudalism. I mean you have corperations that have the ability to have a completely internal *space program*, and not as a one off, or as your entire enterprize, but a wing of your business.
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Oct 3 2007, 07:00 PM
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#33
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 225 Joined: 13-July 07 Member No.: 12,235 |
It's true that megacorps have lots of ridiculous high end stuff, like space programs and missiles and cyberzombies and stuff. And if all the governments of the world collapsed tomorrow, the megacorps wouldn't crumble immediately. But think about the scope, here: megas have lots of assets that are spread out all over the place. The random Ares office building sitting in the outskirts of Bellevue doesn't have its own Ares-operated electrical power plant, it runs off the same power everyone else does, which (I assume) is operated by the UCAS. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that The Aztechnology Pyramid in Seattle, which probably does have its own power plant, will be fully stocked with everything a person could need, but the Stuffer Shack (run by Aztechnology) on the street will close down if the UCAS government closes down. The megacorps are very powerful, but they don't exist in a vacuum. Gimme some time, I'm sure I'll come up with better justification later. |
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