Slave Trade business., A possibility or jus a dream Options

[cha-cha]

Hey CircuitBoyBlue...happy to add to the paranoia, if I was able to :D ....

This is a bit of an aside...but I remember reading somewhere that drugs that WE are familiar with (coke, crack, meth, heroin) are still a thriving business in the shadows b/c not everyone can afford the BTL's etc. That seems logical given the rampant class issues in SR.

Now, knowing that there is plenty of documented evidence of CIA involvement in the 80's to help fund the Cold War (never heard of Red Cocaine, might check that out...try a book called Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography...great read..traces the history of coke and the power players involved...from CIA to Coca Cola to the whole side deal with Iran Contra, to the discovery etc etc), how likely do you think megacorps might be willing to use some of that illicit trade? We know they use Srunners obviously, but how about dipping into the drug trade? Too dangerous?

My players are in 2053 now, but this thread got me thinking about how the corps might use drug trade to help fund the corp war that comes up where Fuchi goes kaput.

Or even Aztlan, considering the heart of the coca trade is perdy darn close there to help fund the fight against the rebels.

Or am I just a twisted cynic? ;)

[Nikoli]

Or, for yet more shades of grey playing, the rebels use it to fund their war with Aztlan.

[cha-cha]

Bingo! Love those shades of grey. Actually, that is exactly what happened in Nicaragua in the '80's. The Sandanistas (the evil commie galactic overlords according to the US) were using cocaine money to fight the Contras, and so were the Contras (the "moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers" according to same source) to fight the Sandanistas. So, basically, two opposite sides of the coin were making the drug lords a heckuva lot of money. Folks like Pablo Escobar laughed all the way to the bank. Great point, Nikoli!

In terms of SR, that is where it could get interesting, actually, IMHO. Aztlaner rebels, being funded by the CAS CIA, with drug money to help destabilize Aztlan with a group of characters running the drugs, money, guns, whatever. Helping set up distribution networks and the like in the CAS and in rebel strongholds. Getting ahold of fixers to set up the drug ops...coordinating smuggling routes...all sorts of shadow operations.

I am gonna shut up now...I have totally hijacked this thread...but I hope it stayed true to the heart of the original post...sorry :|

[Kagetenshi]

Just to clear it up for anyone still confused, as I said, "coke" up there did not refer to cocaine. It was, rather, a code word for slaves.

~J

[otomik]

[Nikoli]

So, in essence, what you are saying is, this sort of operation should be reserved more for organ legging than slave-trade?

[otomik]

yes, slavery doesn't make much economic sense anymore (well, except in some places and small fringe economies). Things change for a variety of reasons and people tend to compliment themselves by assuming that the world is becoming increasingly moral and people are changing for those reasons alone. There's similar thoughts relating to feminism and independence of former colonies.

Organ-legging is an entirely new animal.

[Snow_Fox]

You could have slave labor but be more subtle, hire corp wage slaves, put them in a nice facility in the middle of on where. Sure mr jones, you can quite, just walk out the door.
"But we're in the middle of a desert."
"Should have thought of that before you quit boyo."


As a RL example when I left Xerox in the 90's it was because they were moving the office from Connecticut to Florida. A year befoire they had closed the office in Boston and told the staff there "you want to stay with Xerox you've got to move 200 miles ot the Stamford office. Then they were telling us "You want to stay with Xerox you've got to move to Florida" effectively tearing up all connection to your life and tying yourself to the corp. They expected 60% of the staff to go, they got 13% because we didn't want to be such slaves.

[Necro Tech]

Problem with organ legging is the initial quality of your specimen. If you live in a zone where life is cheap, so are your organs. Bad food, squalid living conditions and no health care= garbage product. Plus you lose money because all the cargo must be delivered alive (harvested organs don't last long) and you have to check for disease/defects from your patients. Low end organ legging should always be done locally. Don't forget to sideline by feeding the ghouls the left overs.

Maximize your revenue streams. :D

[Glyph]

The trouble with illicit businesses is that if your customers can find you, so can other people. Not only people who might want to shut you down for moral reasons, but also competing criminals (especially bad with big organizations, which tend to either squash the competition like a bug or "offer" them the opportunity to work for them - giving up the lion's share of the profit to them, of course), city or corporate officials looking for bribes, law enforcement agencies (which may not care, if you're kidnapping people from the Barrens, but they'll come down on you hard if the "wrong" person disappears, even if your group didn't do it). Plus, the "market" might already be saturated with other budding entrepreneurs with better connections and/or more economies of scale.


Be sure your GM is okay with this, because not every GM will want to run a campaign where the PCs are things like orphanage-bombing terrorists, serial rapists, pedophiles, or slavers. Some GMs like moral ambiguity but prefer for the PCs to be the "good guys"... at least relatively speaking.

[RedmondLarry]

The slave trade business came up as a topic in January.
How much is a metahuman worth?
What to do with a Metahuman?

I don't think there is enough money in it for Shadowrunners to make a living, as a gang can deliver a person of any sex or race for 1000 :nuyen:.

[cheezypoof714]

[cheezypoof714]

Sorry to double post,but I also take custom orders. :D

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I would have to agree with some of the previous posters in saying that slavery wouldn't be an economically feasible enterprise in areas with a high cost of living (like Seattle or any other city). Of course, there are a lot of screwed up places in the shadowrun world, even in North America (Cascade Ork comes to mind).

As for BTL, I definitely think its worth a lot more than actual slaves. A kid can slot a BTL without his parents' knowledge, and he can do it as often as he wants, for one simple down payment.

[Snow_Fox]

Actually no, most BTL's have a limited number of runs, then they burn out, other wise there wouldn't be a constant market for the pushers.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Oh, that makes sense. I was just saying the chip's more convenient.

[Arethusa]

That's not exactly true. Once you can traffic goods, you can traffic anything from truckloads of guns to cars full of drugs to cans full of people. Certainly, there will not be a market for people in Seattle as there would be in some of the seedier South East Asian cities, but that doesn't mean that Seattle's less pleasant areas would not have any demand at all. Crime organization-run industry (eg drug refineries) to brothels to organlegging, there is a market, and there are people with the resources to tap into it. It's highly doubtful anyone makes a business solely out of running people into an area in Seattle, but that's not to say it can't happen.

[Raptor1033]

yeah the problem with trying to set up an organ legging or sex slave trade is exactly what glyph said. the competition that has already entrenched itself won't have any problem adding you to their stock. with organ-legging you have to compete with Tanamous (sp?) and with the sex-slave trade you gotta compete with the Triads or the Seoulpa rings, i don't remember which. trying to cut in on either organization's trade could be excessively hazardous to your health. personally, i wouldn't try competing with them, i'd try to buddy up with them somehow and get as much that way as i can.

[PBTHHHHT]

[The Question Man]

What do slaves run for these days?

Who's are the big players?

Where are the big slave markets?

Why do you need slaves? When you have the SINless.

Cheerful thoughts

QM

[Young Freud]