LOL! "The One Where Chandler Enforces Capitalistic Values Under Threat of Artillery Bombardment."

Okay, we're agreed that a corp can't prevent the CC actions by force. But I'm not convinced about your next step. Is it possible that any single corp, even an AAA could sustain itself through military endeavour? I would say that it isn't. I'd list the immediate points as follows:

• Funding: Firstly, military adventures are one of the most costly endeavours that a society can engage in. Traditionally, to fund a war effort, a government borrows large amounts of capital. This has been done since at least medieval times. An alternative is to levy an extra tax on your peasantry (sorry, I mean citizens). The first isn't going to be an option for a corp under an OO, and the second isn't possible for a corp at all, seeing as it isn't economically set up that way. Fighting a war without financial backing is, as my favourite philosopher would put it, A Very Worrying Thing.
• Economic Structure: Following neatly on from the last point, how is a corp's economy structured. Assuming that we're talking about one of the bigger ones that has extraterritoriality, then what you have is essentially a nation state whos near-entire economic structure is based around exports. The moment such an entity faces trade sanctions, it means disaster. The entire basis of your economy is gone. Do you recall the Great Depression in the USA? That's what would happen in minature.
• Dispersal: Unlike a nation that wishes to defend itself, a corporation is not based in any single area. Furthermore, given the extreme pariah status it now enjoys, it can consider its territories interspersed with factions ranging from resentful down to actively hostile. The corp now has to cede large parts of its former domain. This isn't the biggest factor in this list, but it should be borne in mind that the battle-front a corp must hold is an unusual one.
• Alliances: Most nations at war have allies that, if they wont actively fight with you, will at least continue to trade and sell you supplies. But the OO'ed corp is a marked man and you really don't want to ally yourself with him. Even if you like the corp, your economy is tied irrevocably into the international currency markets and, as far as you are concerned, the corp is flat broke. Their credit is zero. All they could do would be to offer you goods in lieu of cash. Not a very good system.
• Aims and Objectives: This may be the biggest problem of all. In a war, you need a very clear set of objectives. For an invading nation, it is usually seizing some useful territory. Perhaps rich in some resource such as, oh I don't know, oil? *cough* If the territory is nearby you will annex it. If it is remote, then you will install some compliant government that knows it depends on your military support to remain in power *cough cough cough*. In either case though, there is an end in sight. But for the OO'ed corp trying to seize whatever resources it can to sustain itself, there doesn't seem to be such a prospect. It's unlikely it will ever beat its enemies into rescinding the OO. Essentially, it can die fast or it can die slow.
• Loyalty. This overlaps with the very first point, but have the corps employees signed up for a war? In a normal war of defense, the citizens are defending a home land, family and friends. Yes, corporate loyalty and all that, but I can't believe that it extends quite so far as sticking around when the flit hits the shan in quite such a dramatic fashion. A corporate employee, likely highly skilled, has a much greater ability to flee to another corp or country, even taking friends and family with him. Heck, it could be as simple as walking out of the gates. Those with families will have the first priority of getting them out to safety. Those without families will have less reason to stick around for their own sake. And what of those employees that did sign up to fight - the mercenaries and the solders? Bear in mind that the corp can't pay them now in anything other than their own corp-scrip so there go any mercenary forces. All you have are your own soldiery. Faced with the odds stacked against them and no real "homeland" you can expect a high desertion rate.

Of course all of the above varies a bit with which corp is involved. But I think it's reasonable to say that any corp that ranks AA or less, is unlikely even to fight. Even if the execs wanted to, I can't see any security force or employee base sticking around. They just don't have the resources to try and sustain themselves through military venture. As to the AAA's, I don't think it is viable for them either, for the reasons outlined above.

So given all of this, that's why I see the Omega Order as being a freeze the assets, restrict trade sort of ruling rather than an open season of physical strikes. If a corp resonded with military action and resource grabs, then they would lose and they would know that would lose so not even try. A corporation exists on trade and they can't make up for the loss of that with pilfering resources from others. Hyzmarca - I take your point about forcing trade, but in your example, Japan was the isolated party refusing to do business. In this case, the isolated party is the corp and the rest of the world refusing to do business. The situation is far more like Iraq under sanctions that it is Japan.

So I stand by my initial statement. An omega order being some sort of open season where other corps use violence to get the assets of the OO'ed corp, is unrealistic. I don't mind dragons and spirits in my game, because they are internally consistent. But your version of the OO bothers me because it is inconsistant with what we know of the setting and of the way business and international trade works.

True, but unless Lofwyr is absorbing global megacorporate-sized losses with his dragon horde, Saeder-Krupp is still in business to make money. Lofwyr doesn't strike me as a philanthopic idealist, so I don't think he's burning through his personal assets to keep Saeder-Krupp afloat. His personal wealth could be used to shore up Saeder-Krupp in the event of an Omega Order (though that's all speculation, we really have no hard estimate of the wealth of a dragon horde), but for how long? The Corporate Court/ZOG Bank doesn't have to drop the interest rate hikes against S-K, it doesn't have to reinstate S-K loans, and it doesn't have to unfreeze assets, ever.

Now, sure, Lowfyr can retaliate and start killing people. But that's not going to accomplish much and it's certainly not going to make Saeder-Krupp any money. The retaliation might put some fear into the Corporate Court before they issue an Omega Order, but the whole "mutual assured bankruptcy" also serves to keep entities like Saeder-Krupp playing by the rules. That's why the power of the Omega Order is more in the threat than the actual use.

Lofwyr's not the only one with bullets, though. Keep in mind that the Corporate Court is formed of the Big Ten, of which Saeder-Krupp is only one. But neither Saeder-Krupp nor the other Nine want that kind of shooting war. No one wins if that happens. And so they continue to play by the rules.

For some reason reading this makes me think from my history classes about how the Catholic Church would use excommunication to keep rulers in check. I know, the OO is not quite excommunication but it's something I thought was interesting because similar to excommunication, the corp may lose some support of their own folks as they jump ship. Many VP's may think now's the time to head to greener pastures, taking as much of their support and resources with them. Some subsidiaries of the corp may jump too.

And if my corporation wants Novatechs patent on a flu remedy, which part of their offices do I strike? And if I want that juicy telecomms contract with the city council, which executive do I kidnap?

Talking about physical force to seize a corporation's assets is meaningless. Selling second-hand computers is a poor poor fraction of a working corporations worth.

And why would an office of a corporation fight anyway? Your a viable business or sub-division of a targetted corporation. The CC puts you up for auction to other corps, one of which buys you. There's a risk they'll lay you off or transfer you, but heck, it's a lot lot better than having a missile come through the window. If the CC says your now legally part of Renraku instead of Novatech, well... dōzo!

I do believe that Hobbes erred in his assumption that the state of nature was ever left. Indeed, I doubt that it is possible to leave the state of nature. However, the "war of all against all" naturally results in alliances since there is strength in numbers. Likewise, it is natural for people to ally under the strongest tyrants because in strength there is a measure of safety.

The quote itself is a liberal paraphrase of Max Webster who postulated that "a state is a human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory" in 1918.

This definition of government is commonly accepted in social and political sciences although they place a great deal of emphasis on the term "legitimate". I find this to be somewhat fallacious wordplay. In the end, the legitimacy of an act of violence is determined solely by the party that is capable of committing the greatest acts of violence.

Presumably, if you blow up Novatech's telecom facilities the city council will have to negotiate a contract with someone else or do without until you decide to not blow up Novatech's telecom facilities anymore.

But that isn't the point of the Omega Order. The point of the Omega order is to kill the motherfuckers in the most brutal and spectacular way possible so that everyone who sees know not to do whatever the heck they did to set you off.


It isn't about profit. It is about punishment.

What does that get Lowfyr? In all likelihood, he's destroyed his corporation. If not himself. At best, he's created a military empire ruling over a scorched earth. Why would he want that? He was never in the business of running governments to begin with. If he was, he could have worked on that when he first emerged during the Awakening.

Or...he could see the writing on the wall and back down from whatever infraction caused an Omega Order to be levied against Saeder-Krupp. He takes some short term business losses while the Corporate Court renegotiates with Saeder-Krupp and comes to an agreement on reducing interest rates, re-instating loans, and the like. Everything goes back to normal. The world is not destroyed, Saeder-Krupp is not destroyed, and Lofwyr can bounce back and begin making money again.

He'd have to be one dumb lizard not to take that deal. Of course, the truly smart lizard never gets an Omega Order brought down on him to begin with. There's very little in the world that is worth that headache.

I don't think it is. Even an AAA megacorp is not a rival militarily for a modern Western nation of today. Guestimate some comparisons. The land mass occupied by the AAA megacorp is still only going to be a fraction of what a true nation occupies. They have enclaves, the odd arcology and occasional large sites of special nature, such as an agricultural area or oil fields. Land mass matters in warfare as it gives you terrain to pass maneuvre in, fortify and, most importantly, to hamper the enemy. Furthermore the territory of the megacorp is distributed. Essentially they have a large number of isolated bases buried deep in enemy territory. The military term for this is fucked.

As to "born-and-bred" citizens, again the population base of even a megacorp is going to be tiny compared to even a modern western nation. Can you imagine what losing a million people would be like for a corporation? It would be devastating. As to having the resources to conquer what lands they need - laughable. Look at the USA's invasion of Iraq to pick a timely example. The country is in a state of civil war with the US forces keeping their losses down by the radical tactic of staying in their bases. If a true super-power has trouble maintaining an occupation without opposition from a more modern and armed nation (Iraq's military was severely curtailed at the time of the invasion), how well do you think a far smaller force, with no financial backing would fare against a modern force?

And I disagree with your glib assertion that they're all ready to die for their beloved corp. As I pointed out earlier, both the capability and the motivation for leaving for safer places are much increased for the employees of a corp than for the citizens of a nation.

As to the nuclear option. A megacorp will have this technology, but to use it would be to kill yourself. You can be certain that if a megacorp launched a nuclear strike against another then the initiating megacorp would be bombed out of existence. So you're sitting there in your head office and saying to yourself, I've had enough of life, I'm going to kill myself and take all my friends, family, colleagues and home city with me by pressing this button? Let's hope not.

And finally, the big one. There's a radio show in the UK where they play a game called Mornington Crescent. It's not worth going into here, but the first person to say Mornington Crescent wins. I feel like people here are playing the same game but with the word Lofwyr. Whatever argument or case you put forward, somebody shouts "Lofwyr" and then sits back with a satisfied smirk on their face. God, if simsense technology were real, half of you lot would have X-rated sims with titles like "Lofwyr Lights Your Fire." Get a room already! TWO things. One, Lofwyr is not the head of every corp out there. We can discuss the scenario of an Omega Order without every counter argument being "that wouldn't work against Saeder-Krupp." Secondly, Lofwyr is not God Almighty. He's a dragon, i.e. a big lump of muscle and bone with a nice line in magical powers. Tough yes, smart yes, but he's not going to fight against an army on his own. Hell, he could kill a thousand people every day without even a holiday and by the end of the year, you know what? It wouldn't make a dent in a real and large army such as would be fielded by megacorporation enemies.

Well, the only way SK gets an Omega Order against it would be for Alamais to use subtle draconic mind control on the highest officers of all the other AAAs over a period of many years. At that point I think that Lowfyr would decalre himself Fuhrer and conquer Europe just to piss his brother off.


Butterblume, the two canon examples of an Omega Order and its very name suggest that it is a death sentence. I presume that it would be a death sentence even for a militarilary weak AAA. Only a great military power could hope to stave off the other Big 9.

I imagine that it would be rather simple. The AAA would be decapitated with the brutal and public deaths of all its executive officers (probably using thor shots or evil mutant demon cows). Then its assets would be seized and redistributed in some manner.

Not necessarily. They could have just reached their 24th type of order. The next one might be the Omega-Alpha Order, followed by the Omega-Beta Order, Omega-Gamma Order, etc.

So, basically, you were the one not getting my point?

Even that's only partially true - that's why discussions on the internet are so much fun:
There, and only there it's impossible to force people to agree with you.

But the point was more basic - all those immaterial goods are just there to be substituted for material goods... which can be aquired in other ways, too.

Every AAA, if you are lucky. An all-out war scenario, which an omega order is, might frighten some corps enough to jump sides... especially those AA, which are nearly as big as AA sometimes and just lack a CC seat.

..because he is a megalomanic, aiming for world domination and has shown no real interest in ecology?

There seems to be a slight misunderstanding what an Omega Order is.
It's not financial punishement... it's a death sentence, as it's the last option of the CC.
There is no coming back from an OO - it's issued when all those punishements before failed.

IIRC, it wasn't so much about leaving it, but about a gradual process of social stabilisation.

Obviously, someone hasn't seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

You can't stop people from disagreeing you on the internet but you can track them down, fly to their homes, and beat the living crap out of them.

Landmass dosen't really matter on the battlefield of 2070. This isen't WWII where everything was Infantry and Lots Of Them. Then again, it won't matter. All Megacorps have one "home turf", that's rather large, and when placed into this situation, will become much larger as they absorb the surrounding land.

The Megacorp has an advantage the U.S. does not.

It may be as brutal as it likes. It has already been issued a death sentance. It no longer cares what others think. Any territory they occupy that lacks significant regular military force will be rather swiftly subjugated. All else failing, they'll simply nuke the local population out of existance and extract what resources they wish (assuming the resources are hard, like ores or petrochemicals) with drones. Think the Yucatan engagement, only they don't care about preventing news from getting out, and they're simply using WMDs indiscriminately.

A Megacorp is already dead when the Omega gets called on them. They're marked for destruction, their officers will be dragged into the streets and shot. In light of that, there's no reason not to go nuke and take the other guys down with you.


It's very simple. Imagine some gang-banger and you both draw at the same time. A classic Mexican standoff. But he gets stupid, or maybe he's trippin' or something, and he shoots you. Once. Through the chest. You know you're dead, you've got a great big sucking chest wound, and medical attention is hours away.

What do you day? Just lay there and take it? Or blow his ass away with you? I'd hope it should be obvious that the answer is take him down with you.

Same thing, just with nukes and thor shots.

Which, incidentally, is what I imagine happens to people who flame Lofwyr on Shadowland.

Yes, but the Corporate Court is going to issue just about every level of punishment before an Omega Order first. Keep in mind that an Omega Order has never been issued against a megacorp; the closest incident was Operation Reciprocity against Aztechnology. And the Azzies backed down after that. Megacorps--even ones with god complexes--aren't stupid.

I'm saying that an Omega Order being all out war doesn't make sense. The other corps can already get everything they want from the victim without having to deploy military force (see numerous previous posts on this). Therefore any agression begins with the targeted corp. That is why the targeted corp has the choice of how far to push things militarily and that is why they wouldn't decide to kill off everything they hold dear with a nuclear strike.

Landmass remains strategically important no matter how fast your army moves - you need somewhere to base yourself, draw resources from and to fortify; and the more this territory is squeezed down to little bases, the more you find yourself at a strategic disadvantage as you become surrounded by enemy controlled territory. You've also taken only half of my argument - when comparing a megacorp to a modern developed nation, you have to consider that it has a much smaller population, less able to absorb losses.

Ridiculous. A megacorp is filled with human beings. Many of them may have been brought up by the corp, but do you really think there's not a whiff of protest when the corp takes a policy of "nuking the local population". If the megacorp adopts a policy of "we're already dead so it doesn't matter", there is going to be a huge majority of people with friends and families who say "we're not and it bloody well does!" The vast majority of people in a megacorp are workers in various sites and offices who will be more accepting of a different logo being placed outside their building than of being caught up in some suicidal swan song that a mad CEO wants to indulge in. And remember the greed - the other corporations don't wish to bomb the offices, they want to own them and get the profit themselves. Less of a motivation for corp employees to commit suicide over.

So at the risk of repeating myself ad nauseum: the agressors have no need to resort to physical assault to destroy a corp and claim their assets, and indeed would get less of a return if they did. Therefore the only instigator of violence would be the targeted corp, but (a) this is unlikely because it would result in far greater death and suffering for the victim corp and (b) if a corp is attacking your nation or your own corp, you don't need some special dispensation from the CC to defend yourself. There is no need that is consistent with the setting, for an Omega Order to be anything other than the freezing of assets, prevention of trade, and possibly redistribution.

In this case, the order was issued against an individual rather than a corporation but notice how it was carried out. They droped a Thor Shot on the guy. The cost of building a Thor Shot and launching it into orbit is probably in the tens of millions of nuyen. Rocket fuel ain't cheap and these things are massive by design . They used one to kill a single person. Profit was not on their minds.

In some ways the CC is similar to a Corporate version of a war crimes tribunal. Like crimes agianst humanity the general punishment for crimes against corpority is death. Not just finiancial death but physical death, as well.

In Omega Order isn't all out war. It is an execution.

Also notice that this execution was carried out using the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaftsbank's own resources and under the Corporate Court's direct supervision.

Shadowdragon, you keep using this word "sorry" but I do not think it means what you think it means.

My bullshit post as you call it, has not been defeated in "detail". There's a marked lack of detail in the counter-arguments. You say:

But earlier in the thread you said:

Still, ignoring the contradiction and going with your latest argument, I've addressed this earlier:

You also said:

I've already addressed this in my very first post:

and later:

Quite frankly, who cares about seizing a warehouse of goods? The deed now says that they're yours and you can borrow against that asset if you wish. The matter of clearing out the criminals who remain there is a minor problem. Especially now that they're no longer getting paid.

So if you want my posts to be "defeated in detail" please supply the detail rather than just say it's bullshit.

Now having said all that, it seems that hyzmarca has a relevant point in that System Failure apparently defines the an Omega Order in this way. I've never read that. If this makes it cannon, then that's a shame as it doesn't make logical sense.

Done. Let the futility commence!

Fine. Fine! Also, I think you both have a little right and a little wrong.

I've said most of this before, but it seems like the most likely situation, and is somewhere in between you two. My view of it is that the Corporate Court washes its hands of the corp in question completely. That includes ZOG and ZOG-affiliated/loyal banking services and the immediate demand for payment of all outstanding loans from those institutions (companies, especially big ones, loan and get loans all the time). It also includes all protection, though that may be less relevant.

At the point an Omega Order is issued, most of the corporate management has probably already jumped ship, frantically dumping their personal stock, as I've mentioned before. This will include a great many executives and middle managers with their ear to the ground. With a company losing so much money so fast from loan defaults, stock dumps, etc., they can't pay their employees. Low-level employees and security get laid off. Facilities will get closed down, losing their extraterritorial status. Those facilities will get sold off, along with any relevant patents for whatever their developing/manufacturing, at cut-rate prices while the company tries, desperately, not to collapse under its own weight, which its coffers can no longer sustain.

There's absolutely no need to militarily seize corporate assets, when you can buy it for next to nothing and generate solid profit from the existing infrastructure. With seizure by force, you get property destruction, insurance payouts, death settlements with outraged family members, legal complications, and shitloads of bad press.

At the same time, any military attack on a corporate facility, even if that company is hemorrhaging money and desperately trying to consolidate its remaining assets, would probably result in a bloody conflict that wouldn't serve anyone. You can't let someone overtly rob you and expect to remain respectable. It's just not worth the price of the attack, even against a weak opponent. The Corporate Court doesn't keep corps from laying siege to each other. I mean, c'mon, corps run the Corporate Court. Mutual benefit and universal profit, even during drastically vulnerable times, keep corps from laying siege to each other. Usually

A megacorporation hit with an Omega Order could conceivably stay alive with intelligent crisis management and damage control. It wouldn't be a mega anymore, and would never be one again, but it could survive as a B or even A-level multinational. Of course, if the corporation had intelligent management to begin with, the Omega Order would've never been handed down in the first place. And living corporations offer more profit to everyone than a dead husk. And the management (new management, likely) of the now-deflating corp would realize that. There's still money to be made. They can still turn things around and get something, and that's really the name of the game.

Dropping nukes is certainly counterproductive to this end. Seizing land is also counterproductive. The most efficient, profit-oriented way to handle a megacorp that can no longer do business with all the institutions that allow it to be a megacorp is to gleefully gouge it for all the extraneous assets, patents, facilities, and stock they're frantically trying to get rid of, of which there will be a metric fuckton, build it up for 5-10 years, and sell it off yourself at an enormous profit.

Well I agree with everything you just said and I thought that's pretty much what I've been saying. Although you said it in 1/5th the word count that I did (never got the hang of that).

So what's the part I got wrong? I'm curious as to where we disagree.

-K.

Indeed - but don't worry, that mistake is quite common within this thread.
An Omega Order does not mean restrictions - it means purging the offender.

Wich makes statements like

pretty silly, especially considering canon.

(The very assumption of cutting off a corporation from every possibility to make profit is flawed itself in a balkanized world like the sixth, too.)

It's a while since I read Corporate Shadowfiles and my copy is now in storage. But I remember the Omega Order as being freezing of assets and trade restrictions - the corporate equivalent of cutting off oxygen. I'd be interested if anyone else still has a copy and can quote the relevant passage for us.

In any case, trade restrictions make sense.

I see the world of 2070 as being less balkanised than our own. SR is a post WTO, post EU, post ASEAN sort of place. Few nations have any kind of import and export restrictions or tarrifs, there's a de facto international currency and business is completely internationalised. When the Corporate Court (a UN for the plutocratic planet) is in orbit, then what part of the globe isn't interconnected with the rest?

What a stroke of luck I have a Corporate Download handy - that's a bit more recent.

Of course... that's what happens as a normal punishment.

..you don't own any 'Shadows of' or 'Target:' Books, do you?

Most of those entities are still kicking, although under a changed name... and the sixth world has spawned many more.

In fact, there are so many restrictions that even smuggeling entertainment electronics can pay off.

As the CC only regulates extraterritorial corporations directly, pretty much the rest of the world.