On the one hand, you're bombarded with even more propaganda and partisan bullshit. On the other hand, you have microcosmic efficiency and guaranteed employment. Also, you have shadowruns.

Better for who? It's absolutely better for the CEOs, but that's about it. Sucks for everyone else.

I said microcosmic efficiency, as in people working fast. That doesn't help society as a whole the way it's implemented in corps, and I didn't say it did.

As for the guaranteed employment, I meant the indentured scientists and shit, not the starving SINless. And even that has its huge drawbacks.

For the record, I voted no.

A poorly regulated plutocracy combined with an equally poorly regulated oligopolistic market structure may enforce certain very specific types of efficiency in the society, while other types of efficiency, especially those dealing with externalities, public goods, etc., will see a drastic downward trend.

Employment is absolutely not guaranteed in the SR world and there is no reason why it would be in such a system. ("Indentured scientists and shit" are almost guaranteed employment even now.)

so... guaranteed employment for the guys who would be employed anyway. added bonus: if you're competent enough, someone may decide to kidnap or shoot you! ...actually that's not accurate. poison is also a likelihood.

the question just strikes me as sorta silly. this is cyberpunk; the whole point is how bad the world is because of these massive changes that have been inflicted on it.

What I was wondering was if people had any ideas on the advantages as a whole of the megacorporate system. Everyone knows the problems with it.

The advantage is a handful of people get REALLY REALLY rich and get to control the world. I mean, that's an advantage for them.

Society-wise, hmm, let's see. I would say the world is more predictable, as funny as that sounds. If you can figure out where the profit lied, you can figure out where the corps, and thus your governement, will go. If there is no profit in a thing, it won't happen. So I guess war is more predictable. Not that there's less of it, but it's less personnal, which is sort of a good thing.

Next up.. uhmm.. uhhhmmmm... people have more "technological opium" to distract them. You may not be happy, but at least you can't complain.

I'm running out of ideas here. Well, the corps can put up a unified and VERY strong front if they close ranks. If something threathens all of them and they respond, it can be pretty efficient. If aliens from outer spaced invaded, the planet would be more unified, under corp rules, than it would be today. That's sort of good.

The Megacorporate system does have certain advantages. In particular, it is difficult to enforce unpopular and tyranical laws due to so many intentionally porous internetional boarders located so close to one another (you don't need a visa to enter the arcology mall; a mastercard will do). Except for the kidnapping and assasination to further industrial espionage (which is only a slight danger today) the middle class have it rather nice.

Also, it isn't impossible to create a Megacorp that is democratic. Corporations today operate primarilary as democratic republics with the caveat that only the shareholders have franchise. Reasonable stock options for employees and citizens could solve that problems.


Thr poor, on the other hand, are screwed by the lack of social welfare programs. But that has more to do with the economic losses suffered by the national governments that flaws in the Megacorps themselves.

This poll is stupid.

Better a known bad, than a good to be known... Or something like that...

Why's it stupid? Sometimes I think that a megacorporate system would make research faster and make it easier to take on big science. Look at Evo's moon base. I'd still say that megacorporations, or something looking like them, should never happen.

It's not possible to say "the megacorporation system is better or worse then RLs system". Both are far from being perfect, both have flaws, both have positive sides. But to give a general yes or nor answer depends only on the personal situation of everyone. Like mfb said.

There's nothing efficient about megacorporations that wasn't efficient with communism or slavery. Even today, regular old conglomerates have been recognized as a substandard and inefficient method of organizing profitable productive enterprises. The biggest problem in industrial organization is managing information and incentives to act on that information. Smaller, focused companies working with intercompany markets tend to do that better than big, lumbering ones.

The best in game descriptions of the megas has been "neo-feudalism." The reason for the megas to hold together is power and patronage controlled by those at the top. Actually earning large profits is a terrible reason - you'd be better off splitting them up and owning equivalent shares in a lot of smaller companies. Megacorp CEOs have to earn enough profit to pay their underlyings/serfs and to budget further power acquisition, but the most important part of their makeup is extraterratoriality.

The megacorporate system is better because it's of the 80s.

Let's see.

From having psychopathic organizations that have limited but real legal responsibilities, we shift to . . .

Psychopathic organizations that have no responsibility whatsoever. Once the corps go extraterritorial, even the shareholders don't matter any more than the corp allows.

Wonderful. Out of control psychopaths running around. [sarcasm]That's ever so much better than what we have now.[/sarcasm.]

The utter lack of capturing externalities makes the system abyssmal and utterly inefficient relative to a model that captures externalities.

So the consensus is that it sucks. Okay.

Well hey, at least you got the Dumpshock community to agree on something for a change.

That's pretty impressive in a forum where you can have 12-page arguments over flechette ammunition damage codes or Edge refresh rates.

no, you can't.

The megacorp system is better for the megacorps. New Rose Hotel had it right, if aliens came down to earth and searched for intelligent life, the most likely candidate wouldn't be the people, it would be the megacorps. In shadowrun, the corporations have a life of their own, a sort of alien intelligence of their own. Not even the CEO controls where the megacorp goes. I think this is part of why Deus could have been just a little cooler than he was with system crash. There is no way for a single human to have access to all the information required to actually guide a megacorp and make it go where he wants. An AI on the other hand... The AI IS the megacorp.

If it were better, would Shadowrunners be in such demand?