I know that everybody hates the megacorps. They embody everything wrong about the postmodern corporation.

But the thing is, what system would you want to set up instead? Suppose you were given infinite political power, and you could make the world into whatever social order you wanted, which incorporated metahuman rights, magic, and low-level free-market capitalism. What would you do?

Hehe... whatever social order I wanted, huh?

Check this out.

The Geniocracy Project

Anarcho-syndicalism.

~J

edit: This is a response to cetiah's post about megacorporations being good because free-market capitalism is GOOD. I have since forgiven him because he likes geniocracy, but I have to rant about megacorporatization.

edit edit: Nevermind.

edit: deleted as a public service.

You know what, I have no idea where I was going with that.

I took Emo at face value and I was writing up a post on the system I woud indeed impose, but my internet connection was lost and the post with it. Perhaps not a bad thing.

In SR, I don't think it will really be possible to set up anything other than the Megacorps because they are so powerful and entrenched. It would probably take some major threat to force them to band together, and even then it would not be certain. That threat might be if the Azzies succeed in building their bridge to the Horrors or contact whoever it is they are trying to contact out there. Perhaps if the Bug City episode had not been stopped and bugs were everywhere they might have begun to cooperate, but again, probably not.

Another shake up might have been if Dues had succeeded in taking over the Matrix and it had to be shut down, or if it had crashed much harder than it did. Maybe he'll come back yet again and be more successful this time.

Thing is though, there are still small businesses around in SR. They are around at least until the Megas discover that they are profitable and try to buy them up. You could always go back to nature, but that is not a easy life. It might even last until someone buys the land out from under you.

I, for one, don't believe that even the Scourge would cause the megas to unite.

~J

Infinite political power? Apathetic tyrrany. "I am in charge, but I usually don't care."

For most of the populace, it looks very similar to how things are now, except that most restaraunts keep a table open to try to minimize the impact on their regular customers if I decide to drop in.

Personally, I don't see corporate feudalism as a viable long-running system in postmodern society. Without some outside regulation, corporations focused solely on the bottom line would cause economic calamity. Look at what Enron did, and that's just one company that took advantage of weakened regulations.

And corporations could never completely replace government, because some functions of government are not profitable. Private schools and private prisons have enjoyed the success they have, in part, because they have some say in who they take - they don't have to take the problem cases that cause such disproportionate headaches for public schools and state and federal prisons.

Honestly, I don't see why corporations would even want to be extraterritorial in their own right, when the current system is so much more beneficial to them - tax breaks, getting to influence and in some cases even write the laws that pertain to them, government bureaucracy standing between them and civil suits, and so on.



What would I replace it with? Well, Shadowrun is based on criminal dealings taking place in the shadows cast by the megacorporations. But do you really need extraterritoriality for that? I would have the corporations finally overreach, and start losing power to the governments again. And it would be a booming business for shadowrunners, as governments tried to sabotage the corporations, the corporations tried to suborn the governments, and parties on both sides would be cutting deals and backstabbing each other.

I don't see a "system", not in the world-wide sense. Instead, I would see weakened but still powerful corporations, fractured governments ranging from nominal democracies, to dictatorships, to outright weird experiments in governance (neo-anarchism, etc.), the awakened lands, and the usual hodgepodge of smaller factions such as eco-terrorists, greater dragons, and so on.