Full Version: Why Japanacorps are Badass [RL]
| QUOTE (knasser) |
| What happens when their mother dies attacking Mr. Ork Shadowrunner? |
Adopt them out to other couples in the Corp.
the problem with that concept, knasser, is that it decimates the middle class. if the only people in the office are really useful, then the company is going to want to entice them to stay--which means they're going to be paid enough to be upper class. anyone who can't get an office job is stuck, at best, doing low-skill labor; and since there are so many people who can do that, they're not going to be paid much--lower class. the SR world is built on having a middle class to buy all those mid-range consumer electronics; the upper class are only going to get the top-of-the-line models, and the lower class is only going to be able to afford, if anything, the bottom-of-the-barrel models. same with cars, DocWagon contracts, and so on. the stuff from the middle of the gear lists, with decent but not great stats, is going to sit on the shelf.
i'm not saying that a megacorp would keep on useless employees just to feed the economy. what i'm saying is that given the way the SR world works, specifically the fact that it does have a fairly strong middle class, the megas do keep on lots of employees that, by your logic, are useless. what their reason is, i'm not sure.
i'm not saying that a megacorp would keep on useless employees just to feed the economy. what i'm saying is that given the way the SR world works, specifically the fact that it does have a fairly strong middle class, the megas do keep on lots of employees that, by your logic, are useless. what their reason is, i'm not sure.
I high five your understanding of sociology and economics, mfb. You have saved me from the need to post.
to be clear, i'm not completely sold on Kage's idea, either. i just haven't formulated exactly why.
Using agents to perform every task is problematic because agents lack creativity. Sure, they can regurgitate information. But, they can't take that information and make something useful out of it. At best, you're going to get a bunch of drab and uniform spreadsheets that simply contain information that you already know. There will be no opinions and no interpretation and no suggestions there. Agents don't have ideas.
It would be useful only at the most basic level.
And lets not get started on customer service.
It would be useful only at the most basic level.
And lets not get started on customer service.
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
| And lets not get started on customer service. |
Ha! That's the case in point - have you called customer support for most industries recently?
If ever there were a clear example of corporate preference for cost saving over quality.... 
Regarding MFB's point about the need for a Middle Class, I agree, but the fault is the internal consistency of the Shadowrun setting, not my reasoning. Although that said, the Shadowrun setting does have a large underclass of dispossessed and the lack of unskilled work helps explain it. (Of course that's only half the equation, the other half being the shortage of education).
Quite frankly, humanity has been fighting a losing battle to make itself useful ever since the discovery of crop rotation. The principle is that Person X invents a tractor that can do the work of forty farm labourers. Do forty farm labourers then say "great we can cut down to three days a week"? Sadly not - they have to run around trying to find some other way of persuading the owning class to give them their wages. And variations on that theme have been going on for a long time now. I honestly think we're running out of ideas. There are two possibilities - one, population shrinks a little and everyone takes a few extra years in education, or two, we get a lot of civil unrest. The world of Shadowrun seems to have taken the latter path.
I think there still is a middle class in Shadowrun. It's just shrunk a little and the drop off the edge to dispossesed has just grown a lot steeper. That doesn't mean that they have become the new lower class, as they still possess a lot of the qualities of the "middle class." Chiefly, for these purposes, they buy a lot of things. But what the Shadowrun setting seems to have achieved for the most part, is a world where anyone who was "working class" is now verging on dispossesed and the people who would have been "middle" to "upper" class are now miserably working their arses off. Now that's dystopian!
Hyzmarca - I actually agree with what you said about agents, but my response was to the suggestion that corps could just slot knowsofts into any old person and get an equivalent to the dead employee. My point was that at that level, agents would be as good. If you're talking about people who inject life into their spreadsheet summaries, then we're in agreement as I see these people as being higher up the chain than the secretaries and receptionists and low-level clerks. These people are valuable and you don't want them getting pointlessly shot.
-K.
Agents will never be just as good as a human. AIs can be, yes, but not agents. A knowsoft doesn't take you over like a skillsoft does. A knowsoft is just an encyclopedia or an instruction manuel or a textbook that you can access at the speed of thought. It does nothing to stymie human creativity or individuality, unlike skillsofts.
It is, for this reason, that giving knowsofts to employees is viable. And really, the secretaries usually have tem times more business sense than their bosses do. While management is important, it is far more likely than an upper or middle manager is simply a douchebag who coasted to the top by abusing the abilities of his subordinates.
It is, for this reason, that giving knowsofts to employees is viable. And really, the secretaries usually have tem times more business sense than their bosses do. While management is important, it is far more likely than an upper or middle manager is simply a douchebag who coasted to the top by abusing the abilities of his subordinates.
Also, not every corp is a mega. It's possible that most people who work for megas are paid enough to sit in the upper middle classes at least. It's the non-mega employees who would make up the middle class, the ones working for any of those corps that aren't the big 10.
| QUOTE (knasser) |
| Regarding MFB's point about the need for a Middle Class, I agree, but the fault is the internal consistency of the Shadowrun setting, not my reasoning. |
the thing is, your logic is just one line of reasoning out of many possibles. it's an extrapolation of the technology available in SR and a few societal trends--not the extrapolation. in other words, a world full of empty office buildings is not the only possible result of SR's technology. your idea is interesting; there's nothing wrong with it as generic "how offices work in some sci-fi settings" fluff--but it clashes fairly violently with what's known about SR's setting, and therefore must be rejected as an explanation for how things work within that setting.
What I always sensed about SR was that tech didn't replace people in most circumstances - you still had receptionists and whatnot.
Just made them more efficient. Which makes sense; people are infinitely more adaptable than nonAI software.
Just made them more efficient. Which makes sense; people are infinitely more adaptable than nonAI software.
This is a dystopian setting. While agents are great, they tend to get hacked brutally by passing deckers for fun and profit, become pawns of some terrible AI, fall to sudden computer viruses that pass through the agent to delete off-line data, grow in size and scope until they become semi-aware individuals who then air all their manager's dirty laundry, blackmailing him into a better host until the manager hires a runner to shut said agent down, get access to a robotic body it uses to try and destroy all humanity, etc.
Humans may be just as unreliable, but at least most of those problems have been experienced in just about every permutation and can be properly dealt with.
Humans may be just as unreliable, but at least most of those problems have been experienced in just about every permutation and can be properly dealt with.
One of the biggest mistakes that gaijin runners make when stealing a multi-billion nuyen prototype from a Japanacorp is that they forget to Send a thank you letter.
Being a violent criminal is not an excuse for being impolite.
Being a violent criminal is not an excuse for being impolite.
My guess is that a corp gives you a lot in the way of food and lodging as well as pay, meaning you don't have a big next egg to jump ship with if you defect you lose your assets since you can't load up an apartment on a credit stick.
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