I don't know how many of you have seen the cartoon series "Phantom 2040", but in the first episode, there was a vending machine where one of the characters placed an order for a burrito made of Apple, jalepeno, Squid. The machine poured chemicals into a tube which were then 'treated' to form his order. The wrapper was then biodegrabable by rolling it into a small ball and rubbing it between his hands.
I could see that being what goes on in Shadowrun; a whole bunch of 'I Can't Believe It's Not' sort of artifical flavoring like what comes with Ramen Packets, or those Lic-A-Stick kids snacks. A food processor which takes these different packets and it would inject the flavor into your food. For more money, you can get chemical changes that get it to taste and look like the real thing, while just being all the same nutrients whatever meal you eat.
Full Version: What is "soy" in the 6th world?
| QUOTE (Drraagh) |
| I don't know how many of you have seen the cartoon series "Phantom 2040", but in the first episode, there was a vending machine where one of the characters placed an order for a burrito made of Apple, jalepeno, Squid. The machine poured chemicals into a tube which were then 'treated' to form his order. The wrapper was then biodegrabable by rolling it into a small ball and rubbing it between his hands. I could see that being what goes on in Shadowrun; a whole bunch of 'I Can't Believe It's Not' sort of artifical flavoring like what comes with Ramen Packets, or those Lic-A-Stick kids snacks. A food processor which takes these different packets and it would inject the flavor into your food. For more money, you can get chemical changes that get it to taste and look like the real thing, while just being all the same nutrients whatever meal you eat. |
There was some work on edible food wrappers in the last year or two. I guess it didn't catch on. It would be fairly easy to make them biodegradable though, but you'd have to be really careful not to let the supply get wet or it would be ruined.
| QUOTE (Thane36425) |
| but you'd have to be really careful not to let the supply get wet or it would be ruined. |
And don't keep it in a brightly lit or hot environment, especially sunlight, that might cause it to breakdown, too. While we're at it, we probably shouldn't feed the packages after midnight, either.
re: Catholic vampires - keep in mind that vampires are traditionally unholy creatures first and foremost, so while they likely could gain sustenance from it, it would burn them like they'd eaten the sun itself (haha! I kill me.)
re: edible wrappers - one of the stupidest ideas ever. Why do I put my food in a wrapper in the first place? To protect it from all sorts of disgusting and unsanitary stuff outside of the wrapper. If I eat the wrapper too, what is the point of having a wrapper in the first place? Unless I feed the wrapper to my dog, in which case its okay.
re: edible wrappers - one of the stupidest ideas ever. Why do I put my food in a wrapper in the first place? To protect it from all sorts of disgusting and unsanitary stuff outside of the wrapper. If I eat the wrapper too, what is the point of having a wrapper in the first place? Unless I feed the wrapper to my dog, in which case its okay.
| QUOTE (nezumi) |
| re: edible wrappers - one of the stupidest ideas ever. Why do I put my food in a wrapper in the first place? To protect it from all sorts of disgusting and unsanitary stuff outside of the wrapper. If I eat the wrapper too, what is the point of having a wrapper in the first place? Unless I feed the wrapper to my dog, in which case its okay. |
Which is probably the very reason it didn't catch on.
I wasn't talking so much about the wrapper, but about the process of creating the food itself as an alternative to soy everything. Think replicators producing food from elements, this'll produce a food-like substance.
Edit: Suppose I did mentino the wrapper, but just trying to keep this close to topic.
Edit: Suppose I did mentino the wrapper, but just trying to keep this close to topic.
| QUOTE (Drraagh) |
| I wasn't talking so much about the wrapper, but about the process of creating the food itself as an alternative to soy everything. Think replicators producing food from elements, this'll produce a food-like substance. |
I understood that. You did mention the bio-degradable wrapper which reminded me of the edible ones.
Actually the edible wrapper does have its uses and indeed is one of the more popular features in food we eat today.
Two examples are the sandwich and pizza both developed so that they had a wrapper which would prevent the food from getting messed up while also allow easy gripping of the food without getting hands dirty.
Two examples are the sandwich and pizza both developed so that they had a wrapper which would prevent the food from getting messed up while also allow easy gripping of the food without getting hands dirty.
| QUOTE |
The absolute worst food available is at Street lifestyle: rummaging through garbage cans for leftovers that haven’t gone too rotten yet. Vile stuff. The next step up from rummaging through garbage cans is kibble, made from vat-grown yeast. Kibble is just like the dry food you feed your dog or cat, but it’s made to be vaguely edible to a (meta)human palate. It tends to come in several basic flavors (neutral, bread, chicken, fish, beef— think of ramen packets). It’s the most common meal at Squatter lifestyle, and it’s full of preservatives to keep it from going bad. It’s actually relatively nourishing, and flavor drops for the stuff are available when you want to splurge for a few extra nuyen. The continuum moving up from Squatter to Low lifestyle involves getting little extras here and there— there are entire cookbooks full of recipes for making kibble more interesting to eat. People surviving on 500¥ a month are usually living on a mixture of kibble and ramen noodles. By the time you’re at Low lifestyle, the kibble is mostly a thing of the past and meals are varieties of vitamin-enriched soybean called “nutrisoy” that have had their flavor and texture tweaked to resemble a wide variety of other foods, or similarly tweaked Single Cell Organic Proteins (SCOP). Many Elven children grow up unaware that they can’t digest meat because they’ve grown up on soyburgers. At Middle lifestyle, the nutrisoy is pretty good and there’s a sprinkling of goodies produced in vats. If you have beef as a rare treat, it’s probably never been near a cow since someone sampled one of the beasts a few years ago for a tissue sample. Autochefs with a full set of flavor taps can churn out quite a variety of meals, and it seems pretty good as long as you don’t learn how rich the variety of real food is. Prepak foods, the descendents of TV dinners, are also quite common at this level. There are brands of self-heating prepak meals that use exothermic chemical reactions to heat up their contents when you pull a tab, and many busy corporators carry one in their briefcase for those times when they can’t stop for a real meal. Vatgrown food is pretty common at High lifestyle; there’s enough of a market for real meat and eggs and veggies that there are plenty of factory farms still in business. You have to hit Luxury lifestyle to be able to afford organically grown vegetables that came out of the ground on a farm, and meat from free-range animals. Meanwhile, there are lots of farms out there churning out basic soybeans for food and oilplants for fuel; livestock is a much smaller market in the 2050’s. Corporations have bought up most land for growing things and work by factory farming. |
where does this "elves can't eat meat" keep cropping up from?
| QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0) |
| where does this "elves can't eat meat" keep cropping up from? |
SR1 I think.
It's a combination of the alergy to synthetic/processed foods which was a way to get an extra skill attribute/point, and slang term dandelion eater in SR1/2.
I recall it was in the racial description of elves way way back in SR1. They may have had to pick an allergy too, but that's a stretch. Now I'm really curious what happened to my book. I had all three sitting on my shelves before, now I just have three and four...
From book 7100, softcover SR1:
| QUOTE (page 26 @ Metahumanity, Elf, Homo sapiens nobilis) |
| Habits: Elves are nocturnal beings. They are vegetarians. They tend to live in small groups, preferaby away from teh rest of Humanity. |
It appears ver batim as above in book 7101, hardcover SR1. In SR2 7900, it is adjusted to "Their diet is vegetarian." In SR2 7901, same thing.
With SR3, the 3rd person, "scientific" metahuman descriptions were replaced with first person narratives from members of each race. I don't recall any specific reference in 3e material to their diet, but as I find it silly I might have seen it at one point and just forgotten it, as I never would have used it anyway.
Purism aside, I'm quite happy that it was eventually phased out.
On the subject of food. I remember in what I think was Shadowtech, an entry on Mycoprotein. It discussed how it was the source for a majority of all food in the 6th world. At least I think it was Shadowtech. I would have to do some major digging to find it right now. Maybe one of our master archivists could find the entry? If I find it I will post it myself.
But as I remember. It discussed how it was manufactured and how it was used. I belive it also mentioned how big it was with the eating poor. Not positive on that last point. But I have always assumed that it was the predominant foodstuff for the crew on the street. Pressed and favored into anything you want.
| QUOTE (cleggster) |
| On the subject of food. I remember in what I think was Shadowtech, an entry on Mycoprotein. It discussed how it was the source for a majority of all food in the 6th world. At least I think it was Shadowtech. I would have to do some major digging to find it right now. Maybe one of our master archivists could find the entry? If I find it I will post it myself. But as I remember. It discussed how it was manufactured and how it was used. I belive it also mentioned how big it was with the eating poor. Not positive on that last point. But I have always assumed that it was the predominant foodstuff for the crew on the street. Pressed and favored into anything you want. |
It was Shadowtech. It says it is a cultured fungus that grows to yield in 5.5 hours and produce .8 kilograms of dry weight of cells for every kilogram of sugar consumed. They are then treated to remove RNA so as to prevent kidney stones and gout in humans. The finished prodcut can be formed, flavored and textured into anything desired, such as chicken, beef, pork and so on.
Well the only thing I found with a quick glance was in a the middle of an IC rant about elfish sterotypes from an elf rigger.
Shadowrun Third Edition; page 48
"... Please, somebody, help the poor elf girl use the big, complicated public Matrix terminal! Or make a big production out of bringing some wilted salad to the cute little elf, so she won't have to soil her lips with meat. ..."
Although it can be read either way, I always took it to mean that at least by Third Edition elfs could eat meat, but that many people mistakenly thought that they couldn't.
Shadowrun Third Edition; page 48
"... Please, somebody, help the poor elf girl use the big, complicated public Matrix terminal! Or make a big production out of bringing some wilted salad to the cute little elf, so she won't have to soil her lips with meat. ..."
Although it can be read either way, I always took it to mean that at least by Third Edition elfs could eat meat, but that many people mistakenly thought that they couldn't.
Sounds like some other stuff that's been retconned. "What? No, ghouls aren't a metatype. That was just people's misconceptions. What? No, elves can eat meat..."
....That was just us fixing something that was stupid.
....That was just us fixing something that was stupid.
Personally I like to see low end food as kinda like the protein paste from Firefly. Especially the episode where it's Simon's birthday and Kaley gives him the cake and says something to the effect of.
"we didn't have any sugar... or flour... actually it's pretty much the same thing we just had for dinner. I tried to make the icing as chocolaty as I could though."
That said though, I like the kibble idea too. Personally I see a veriety of different soy/yeast/kelp/recostituted metahumans/Mycoprotein/dog food ect. All produced by different corps, all advertising that their variety has more nerps. Flavoring is added usually added pre-packaged with the meal, sorta like a mirowave dinner.
For those that want slightly more variety (and can afford it, middle lifestyle) there is the option of still cooking by hand using products that appear quite simmilar to those found on our own supermarket shelves just much more frankenstine like when you actually read the label. There would still be a meat department, a dairy, and a bread shelf, the products would look and taste like real food, of course as someone mentioned before though, their tasting like real food is dependant on you never having tasted real food. Alternatively if your 12 hour workday just doesn't give you time to cook you can simply pop the same products into your Aztechnology industries "KitchenBuddy" autocook, program what you want it to make, call it as you are leaving the office and have a nice hot "home cooked" meal waiting for you when you get home.
"we didn't have any sugar... or flour... actually it's pretty much the same thing we just had for dinner. I tried to make the icing as chocolaty as I could though."
That said though, I like the kibble idea too. Personally I see a veriety of different soy/yeast/kelp/recostituted metahumans/Mycoprotein/dog food ect. All produced by different corps, all advertising that their variety has more nerps. Flavoring is added usually added pre-packaged with the meal, sorta like a mirowave dinner.
For those that want slightly more variety (and can afford it, middle lifestyle) there is the option of still cooking by hand using products that appear quite simmilar to those found on our own supermarket shelves just much more frankenstine like when you actually read the label. There would still be a meat department, a dairy, and a bread shelf, the products would look and taste like real food, of course as someone mentioned before though, their tasting like real food is dependant on you never having tasted real food. Alternatively if your 12 hour workday just doesn't give you time to cook you can simply pop the same products into your Aztechnology industries "KitchenBuddy" autocook, program what you want it to make, call it as you are leaving the office and have a nice hot "home cooked" meal waiting for you when you get home.
| QUOTE (Ravor) |
| Well the only thing I found with a quick glance was in a the middle of an IC rant about elfish sterotypes from an elf rigger. Shadowrun Third Edition; page 48 "... Please, somebody, help the poor elf girl use the big, complicated public Matrix terminal! Or make a big production out of bringing some wilted salad to the cute little elf, so she won't have to soil her lips with meat. ..." Although it can be read either way, I always took it to mean that at least by Third Edition elfs could eat meat, but that many people mistakenly thought that they couldn't. |
Every time I read that paragraph it makes me want to go eat a salad. They're quite hard to come by in Micronesia.
I think one point missing from this conversation is the fact that even if most food is/can be produced more cheaply/efficiently one way or the other in SR it is the buying public that determines such things.
While the Sinless would get kibble or worse those with even a meager extra income above hand to mouth level will be a bit more picky about what they eat and ranging out from what would be considered their lifestyle's level of food quality would be quite common, though obviosly a rare treat to the individual.
A person may very well be willing to spend more on paste B than paste A just because paste B uses "Real Beef!" in its manufacturing (granted the ground up remains of what ever wasn't used for higher end goods and foods). Even if they know that the two are chemically similar and B may even have a higher chance of having food poisoning with it. They may convince themselves that B tastes better because they know it actually has part of a cow in it.
Taste is a matter of perception and people are willing even in some desperate times to pay for better perception.
While the Sinless would get kibble or worse those with even a meager extra income above hand to mouth level will be a bit more picky about what they eat and ranging out from what would be considered their lifestyle's level of food quality would be quite common, though obviosly a rare treat to the individual.
A person may very well be willing to spend more on paste B than paste A just because paste B uses "Real Beef!" in its manufacturing (granted the ground up remains of what ever wasn't used for higher end goods and foods). Even if they know that the two are chemically similar and B may even have a higher chance of having food poisoning with it. They may convince themselves that B tastes better because they know it actually has part of a cow in it.
Taste is a matter of perception and people are willing even in some desperate times to pay for better perception.
Perception is largely determined by marketing, and marketing techniques in 2070 are pretty advanced. "It tastes like beef, citizen. Move along."
| QUOTE (Backgammon) |
| Perception is largely determined by marketing, and marketing techniques in 2070 are pretty advanced. "It tastes like beef, citizen. Move along." |
That's an interesting point. In SR's 2070, how many people below say Middle lifestyle, meaning a large portion of the population, is going to know what beef tastes like anyway? If real meat is scarce, they wouldn't have to worry too much about it if most of the poor hadn't had real meat in the last generation or two. Some of the lower end deli meats today don't taste much like or have the texture of the meat they are supposed to be. I won't say which brand, but a few years ago I tried one that had the texture of wet rubber and no taste aside from salt.
| QUOTE (Backgammon) |
| Perception is largely determined by marketing, and marketing techniques in 2070 are pretty advanced. "It tastes like beef, citizen. Move along." |
Yeah but there is a big differance between "like" and "is" and while marketing might strive day and night to blurr that legally there are quite a few "truth in advertising" laws which mean that ultimately the corp'll have to fess up.
| QUOTE (Thane36425) |
| That's an interesting point. In SR's 2070, how many people below say Middle lifestyle, meaning a large portion of the population, is going to know what beef tastes like anyway? If real meat is scarce, they wouldn't have to worry too much about it if most of the poor hadn't had real meat in the last generation or two. Some of the lower end deli meats today don't taste much like or have the texture of the meat they are supposed to be. I won't say which brand, but a few years ago I tried one that had the texture of wet rubber and no taste aside from salt. |
Weather or not they actually know doesn't matter in this case. The (fairly logical) perception would be that if it has some "beef" in it then it must has some taste of "real" beef. It woln't work for everyone but I'd bet it would be enough.
| QUOTE (Gerzel) |
| there are quite a few "truth in advertising" laws which mean that ultimately the corp'll have to fess up. |
"Corp" and "legally" - since when do these two words mix?
| QUOTE (NightmareX @ Mar 7 2007, 09:48 AM) | ||
"Corp" and "legally" - since when do these two words mix? |
I didn't know the UCAS had any truth in advertising laws. Regardless, UCAS law doesn't apply if its satellite TV transmitted from a corp compound, and there are loopholes to get that onto cable, radio and broadcast trid.
The real threat is a competing corp doing an investigation. Imagine an Aztechnology report on how Renraku "real beef-burger hamburgers!" actually contains canine, not bovine meat. Buy Aztechnology! When its dog, we tell you!
To tap something from a while back on this thread:
FYI, by canon law, the Eucharist is only validly celebrated if the wine comes from grapes, and the bread from wheat:
Can. 924 §1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed.
§2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling.
§3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and not spoiled.
Grape juice, in other words, does not count.
FYI, by canon law, the Eucharist is only validly celebrated if the wine comes from grapes, and the bread from wheat:
Can. 924 §1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed.
§2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling.
§3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and not spoiled.
Grape juice, in other words, does not count.
| QUOTE (nezumi) |
| The real threat is a competing corp doing an investigation. Imagine an Aztechnology report on how Renraku "real beef-burger hamburgers!" actually contains canine, not bovine meat. Buy Aztechnology! When its dog, we tell you! |
Hmm, I'm not so sure. Everyone's product contains crap. There might be an unsaid agreement that you don't point out WHAT the product is made of. Just market on better taste, more nutrients, etc. You gotta protect the industry as a whole. Attracting the public's attention to the crap they eat is probably a bad idea.
| QUOTE (Penta) |
| To tap something from a while back on this thread: FYI, by canon law, the Eucharist is only validly celebrated if the wine comes from grapes, and the bread from wheat: Can. 924 §1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed. §2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling. §3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and not spoiled. Grape juice, in other words, does not count. |
You missed the point of transconfiguration. If you're not Catholic, I'm not surprised (and even if you are a Catholic, I'm really not surprised), but by canon, the eucharist, when it is ready to be shared with the congregation, is the LITERAL body and blood of Christ. Not wheat, not grape juice. I really don't want to get in a debate about whether it literally is or isn't or what would happen if you ran it through a spectrometer or whatnot. All that is relevant is, according to Catholic belief, it IS flesh and blood, literally, not figuratively. And in a game where dragons run for president and magic is shaped largely by belief, I don't see a reason why, by Shadowrun rules, it isn't feasible that the Catholics are right in this case.
As for the truth in marketing stuff... Sure, no one really wants to show that all the soy stuff is made of trash. But that doesn't mean one company won't slam another company's products and use marketing dollars to push their own. That's how it works now. Heck, ever watch politicians during election season? Mud-slinging DOES bring in more support, as long as you pick your target carefully. So no one is going to start advertising for how bad soy is unless they sell something other than soy. However, they may advertise how bad Renraku's soy is.
I just started re-reading "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" at work between calls and I think that shows how much truth there is in advertising these days. No actual advertisements, but popular biosculpted people using products and who wouldn't want to be like those popular people? So, they use products people want to sell, just like commercials, but they don't brand it as commercials.
| QUOTE (Backgammon) |
| Hmm, I'm not so sure. Everyone's product contains crap. There might be an unsaid agreement that you don't point out WHAT the product is made of. Just market on better taste, more nutrients, etc. You gotta protect the industry as a whole. Attracting the public's attention to the crap they eat is probably a bad idea. |
Bad idea for PR flaks.
Good idea for Newsflaks wanting a scoop! Food horror stories are a time honored tradition in the news media and have the added benefit that you can sit on them for a while and they woln't spoil. You can't keep a story about which polician accepted who's bribes for a slow newsday, but a bad food story that company will churn out its crap until led kicking and screaming to a new PR campaign to hide it again.
| QUOTE (NightmareX) | ||
"Corp" and "legally" - since when do these two words mix? |
Actually, since maintaining a standing army was a huge business expense. Sure extraterritoriality gives the Corps a lot of loopholes and on paper they are as powerful as nations, but they still have to play by the rules. Push things too far and they get tanks rolling through their compounds and those fancy extraterritoriality laws mean bubkis.
That really seems to be the difference between a MegaCorp and a Nation. A Nation raises taxes and is thus able to keep a standing army, a real one. Sure Corps often keep ones of their own but compared to what a size-able nation can keep?
| QUOTE (Gerzel) |
| Good idea for Newsflaks wanting a scoop! Food horror stories are a time honored tradition in the news media and have the added benefit that you can sit on them for a while and they woln't spoil. You can't keep a story about which polician accepted who's bribes for a slow newsday, but a bad food story that company will churn out its crap until led kicking and screaming to a new PR campaign to hide it again. |
I agree, except for one thing: the media is owned by the same corps who make the food.
Pirate media or fringe independant media outlets are the only ones that would report on this. It's not a negligible influence, but it's not the same as say a CNN or BBc-sized news outlet, not the same reach.
Which is all cool as far as cyberpunk goes. This is how it's meant to be.
| QUOTE (Gerzel) |
| Actually, since maintaining a standing army was a huge business expense. Sure extraterritoriality gives the Corps a lot of loopholes and on paper they are as powerful as nations, but they still have to play by the rules. Push things too far and they get tanks rolling through their compounds and those fancy extraterritoriality laws mean bubkis. That really seems to be the difference between a MegaCorp and a Nation. A Nation raises taxes and is thus able to keep a standing army, a real one. Sure Corps often keep ones of their own but compared to what a size-able nation can keep? |
Well, In Your World, maybe corps are weak like that, but in the world most of us GM, the governement is laughably incapable of forcing any corp to do anything. It's been said repeatedly that governements exist only as a buffer between the corps and The People. Governements are no longer there to protect the people for corporate greed. They are there to protect corporate greed from the people.
The profit corps make is WAY WAY WAY bigger than the taxes governement raise. The only reason corps don't have armies is because they don't need any. Because the governement, essentially corp susbiduaries, do it for them.
| QUOTE (nezumi) |
| You missed the point of transconfiguration. If you're not Catholic, I'm not surprised (and even if you are a Catholic, I'm really not surprised), but by canon, the eucharist, when it is ready to be shared with the congregation, is the LITERAL body and blood of Christ. Not wheat, not grape juice. I really don't want to get in a debate about whether it literally is or isn't or what would happen if you ran it through a spectrometer or whatnot. All that is relevant is, according to Catholic belief, it IS flesh and blood, literally, not figuratively. And in a game where dragons run for president and magic is shaped largely by belief, I don't see a reason why, by Shadowrun rules, it isn't feasible that the Catholics are right in this case. |
One: Transubstantiation, not transconfiguration.
Two: I am, and I do know that...But I'd misread the post I was referring to.
Three: By that answer, how do priests not take drain when consecrating the host?
No, I think it's better if Shadowrun maintains a...respectful silence on the topic.
| QUOTE (Penta) |
| One: Transubstantiation, not transconfiguration. Two: I am, and I do know that...But I'd misread the post I was referring to. Three: By that answer, how do priests not take drain when consecrating the host? No, I think it's better if Shadowrun maintains a...respectful silence on the topic. |
Ay! My Catholic-fu is inferior.
I do agree that it is better to keep a respectful silence (at least in official canon). But it's still a neat idea
| QUOTE (Backgammon) |
| I agree, except for one thing: the media is owned by the same corps who make the food. Pirate media or fringe independant media outlets are the only ones that would report on this. It's not a negligible influence, but it's not the same as say a CNN or BBc-sized news outlet, not the same reach. Which is all cool as far as cyberpunk goes. This is how it's meant to be. |
Please. The larger the organization the harder it is for the right hand to know what the left is doing.
Besides the corps may stlll allow it making sure the focus is on other corps, as news stories like this come and go, put enough into the stream and people will grow accustomed to them and write them off as sensationalist journalism.
Thus I don't think Corp owned would stop such stories.
| QUOTE (Backgammon) | ||
Well, In Your World, maybe corps are weak like that, but in the world most of us GM, the governement is laughably incapable of forcing any corp to do anything. It's been said repeatedly that governements exist only as a buffer between the corps and The People. Governements are no longer there to protect the people for corporate greed. They are there to protect corporate greed from the people. The profit corps make is WAY WAY WAY bigger than the taxes governement raise. The only reason corps don't have armies is because they don't need any. Because the governement, essentially corp susbiduaries, do it for them. |
Well the govenrments are incapable for the most part and for the most part the armies DONT enter play.
But there is a point at which they do and the balance of power shifts. Corps still require at least the grudging consent of the government of any area they operate in. For day to day atrocities the goverments are powerless, because using their military would do more harm than good, but the Corps can cross a line (one that they are careful NOT to cross) and have the armed forces come into play.
The corps should be subject to the legal restraints of a government, aka the police, but as it is they are only subject at least in part to the diplomatic restraints, aka the military.
The only restrainting power the corps have ever respected in SR is the Corporate Court, the odd strong governement like the Tirs, Amazonia and Aztlan aside.
While what you say is completely true today, and stands to reason, it is simply not the case in the shadowrun world. No governement has EVER threathened a corp with military action. And there have been times when it would have been warranted.
While what you say is completely true today, and stands to reason, it is simply not the case in the shadowrun world. No governement has EVER threathened a corp with military action. And there have been times when it would have been warranted.
| QUOTE (Gerzel) |
| A Nation raises taxes and is thus able to keep a standing army, a real one. |
A real one, but not a good one. Most nation's tax bases are in the toilet because of megacorp extraterritoriality. In the US, for example, the wealthiest 5% pay 57% of all income taxes. In The Sixth World, the wealthiest 5% don't pay any taxes at all because they are extraterritorial.
That alone cuts away the majority of the UCAS tax base. With VITAS, the various successions, and the economic decay that has led to the existence of barrens areas, the UCAS tax revenue cannot be more than 20% of the tax revenue of the former USA and Canada. Much of that has to be spent on maintaining infrastructure.
| QUOTE (Penta) |
| To tap something from a while back on this thread: FYI, by canon law, the Eucharist is only validly celebrated if the wine comes from grapes, and the bread from wheat: Can. 924 §1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed. §2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling. §3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and not spoiled. Grape juice, in other words, does not count. |
I love how in one post you utterly pwned and destroyed those puriticannical branches which try the whole grape juice thing.
| QUOTE |
| That really seems to be the difference between a MegaCorp and a Nation. A Nation raises taxes and is thus able to keep a standing army, a real one. Sure Corps often keep ones of their own but compared to what a size-able nation can keep? |
Absolutely. The nation-state of the Shadowrun world is a poor husk of its former glory. With the degree of Balkanization that has occurred, it is no wonder that corporations push governmnts around with impunity.
Consider Tír na nÓg. It's something we're actually supposed to give a damn about on the world stage as far as nations go. It has... less than four million people in it. Shiawase has more employees than that in Europe. If Shiawase stopped trading with the nÓg, Shiawase probably wouldn't notice and Tír na nÓg's economy would collapse. Shiawase cares more about its market share in Atlanta than it does about its market share in Tír na nÓg.
And while that's an admittedly extreme example, it's not a unique example. THe Republic of Tuscany is not going to win any blinking contests with NeoNET. Even a relatively major nation like Shaanxi is still going to get gut-punched if it tries to go toe-to-toe with Aztechnology - it only has 40 million people!
There are damn few nations that corporations can't push around at will, and that's no surprise. The corporation has more income, more people, more agile capital, and a better bargaining position with other nations. Seriously, if Sichuan wanted to help out the Vampire overlords of Bucharest, what could it do? If it wanted to help out Ares macrotech, what could it do?
Simply put, a corporation can bargain as a single unit against and with every single nation on the planet in a completely assymetric fashion. It's just like the nations of the world were non-unionized workers and the corporations were some sort of monopoly or something. It's actually exactly like that.
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There are few countries on the planet that are big enough that they could bargain from a position of - if not strength - then at least not weakness. They are:
- Imperial Nippon
- United Korea
- Russia
- Indian Union
- UCAS
- CAS
- Aztlan
- Amazonia
And you know what? Of the eight nations on the planet big enough to potentially push megacorps around, fully half of them are essentially owned by megacorporations. And really if it comes down to a pick-up game between Aztlan, the UCAS, Imperial Nippon, and Russia against United Korea, the Indian Union, Amazonia, and the Confederacy... well I know where I'm placing all of my bets.
Nations are small, weak, and isolated. Corporations are strong, wealthy, and world-spanning.
-Frank
| QUOTE (Gerzel @ Mar 7 2007, 07:25 PM) |
| Actually, since maintaining a standing army was a huge business expense. Sure extraterritoriality gives the Corps a lot of loopholes and on paper they are as powerful as nations, but they still have to play by the rules. Push things too far and they get tanks rolling through their compounds and those fancy extraterritoriality laws mean bubkis. That really seems to be the difference between a MegaCorp and a Nation. A Nation raises taxes and is thus able to keep a standing army, a real one. Sure Corps often keep ones of their own but compared to what a size-able nation can keep? |
Yeah, invade a mega-corp. Great way to kiss your economy good bye!
Cause not only would that corp stop trading with you, but many (not all) of the other megas may too - good way to teach petty upstart politicians a lesson. Of course, Frank made the point more eloquently.
I'll interject a little bit here that the above is generally true for SR1-SR3 but that SR4 weakend the megas in Crash2.0.
The poorer a country was, the less Crash2.0 affected them as they had less modern tech to fail. Megas, which probably like Dell try to maintan as little inventory as possible, found themselves unable to feed or supply their staff and things fell apart pretty hard for them, especially since corps tend to have a top-down approach and lots of in-fighting that doesn't bode well for emergency conditions.
As analogies go, corp executives are sharks and military officers are wolves. Both are predators that compete for resources with each other but sharks don't cooperate the way wolves do.
The governments, particularly the militaries that incorporated "complete digital collapse" into their go-to-hell training, had some semblance of competence. Old, redudandant systems left over from the 20th century but still maintained out of militaristic habit helped get people over the hump.
The megas are back on their feet now but the masses and the governments realized that they did have certain abilities that the megas didn't and curtailed some corp abuses of power. True, nano-Tunisia is still the bitch of some megacorp, but the larger governments have acquired some backbone.
Will it last? Not forever. But it now means that the governments are players again, which actually provides MORE options for shadow ops as there are more potential employers and targets.
The poorer a country was, the less Crash2.0 affected them as they had less modern tech to fail. Megas, which probably like Dell try to maintan as little inventory as possible, found themselves unable to feed or supply their staff and things fell apart pretty hard for them, especially since corps tend to have a top-down approach and lots of in-fighting that doesn't bode well for emergency conditions.
As analogies go, corp executives are sharks and military officers are wolves. Both are predators that compete for resources with each other but sharks don't cooperate the way wolves do.
The governments, particularly the militaries that incorporated "complete digital collapse" into their go-to-hell training, had some semblance of competence. Old, redudandant systems left over from the 20th century but still maintained out of militaristic habit helped get people over the hump.
The megas are back on their feet now but the masses and the governments realized that they did have certain abilities that the megas didn't and curtailed some corp abuses of power. True, nano-Tunisia is still the bitch of some megacorp, but the larger governments have acquired some backbone.
Will it last? Not forever. But it now means that the governments are players again, which actually provides MORE options for shadow ops as there are more potential employers and targets.
As I haven't read all of the SR4 books, where are you getting this from?
| QUOTE (Backgammon) |
| The only restrainting power the corps have ever respected in SR is the Corporate Court, the odd strong governement like the Tirs, Amazonia and Aztlan aside. While what you say is completely true today, and stands to reason, it is simply not the case in the shadowrun world. No governement has EVER threathened a corp with military action. And there have been times when it would have been warranted. |
Take a look into the history of the British East India Company, a real world MegaCorp. No my friend, governments do have teeth if pushed far enough.
Also corporate assets have often been seized by individual states esp when revolution is involved.
So while no, there has never been "direct military action against a specific corporation" military force has been used against corporations to sieze assets, and corporate operating rights can be taken over.
The Corporate Court works only as long as the nations of the world recognize it as an entity. That happens only as long as keeping with the treaties that created it is less of a burden than the perceived cost of breaking them.
The bottom line is the corps may be big and powerful, but their power is based on economics, and trade largely. They are spread out across the world so that their individual holdings in any one area are fairly easy to seize. What keeps that from happening is the promise of continued trade.
| QUOTE (NightmareX) |
| Yeah, invade a mega-corp. Great way to kiss your economy good bye! Cause not only would that corp stop trading with you, but many (not all) of the other megas may too - good way to teach petty upstart politicians a lesson. Of course, Frank made the point more eloquently. |
Yes but if the Corp has run over you and your economy is already in the crapper what exactly are you saying goodbye to again?
One thing.
If the Corps really did have greater power than national governments and could truly do what they pleased w/o any control then they wouldn't need deniable assets, aka shadowrunners.
Shadowrunners exist because the corps cannot directly challenge national authorities and directly impose their own law. They may be able to influence national governments to an extreme but there are still rules that they have to follow.
Also if they cross the line and truly screw up a government might be able to kick a Corp out. Remember one Corp out just leaves an economy wanting goods more room for the rest. Nations have power as well in that the Corps are more than willing to fill in for one another.
Also to answer Frank. While you are right that a corp could gutpunch a nationstate, nations have a history of banding together in time of need (See WWI, WWII, and it goes back further to the Peloponnesian War) alliances between nations against a common enemy are common throughout history. The corps survive only as long as they are not an enemy to the states.
No nations might not be superpowers like they supposedly once where and yes the field is different but make no mistake, nations still have power and a Corp can ball out the first nation with ease, but what of the second, or third?
If the Corps really did have greater power than national governments and could truly do what they pleased w/o any control then they wouldn't need deniable assets, aka shadowrunners.
Shadowrunners exist because the corps cannot directly challenge national authorities and directly impose their own law. They may be able to influence national governments to an extreme but there are still rules that they have to follow.
Also if they cross the line and truly screw up a government might be able to kick a Corp out. Remember one Corp out just leaves an economy wanting goods more room for the rest. Nations have power as well in that the Corps are more than willing to fill in for one another.
Also to answer Frank. While you are right that a corp could gutpunch a nationstate, nations have a history of banding together in time of need (See WWI, WWII, and it goes back further to the Peloponnesian War) alliances between nations against a common enemy are common throughout history. The corps survive only as long as they are not an enemy to the states.
No nations might not be superpowers like they supposedly once where and yes the field is different but make no mistake, nations still have power and a Corp can ball out the first nation with ease, but what of the second, or third?
| QUOTE (nezumi) | ||
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I like Firefly and the new Battlestar Gallactica series, they have futuristic settings but don't pussy out on mentioning God(s). Too much Sci-Fi has a monotonous atheist outlook contrained into "respectful silence" out of fear of pissing off the audience.
There are so many basic questions that are unanswered by this "respectful silence" policy like if I can trap a soul in a cyberzombie why can't I find and bind a soul to raise the dead?
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