Now Shadowrun seems to be based around the idea that Nation States are more or less withering away. While Megacorps and Organized Family fills the vacuum of power. I was just considering though how powerful a group would have to be before it could simply decide that a free city or government was getting uppity by declaring a bounty on one of its leaders heads, and extract, and execute one of the government leaders.
I figure it isn't completely unreasonable for a fairly large pirate organization to decide to do this. Since they would likely have both military power, and the right temperament.

It was true a few years ago, but since Collton took charge of the Renraku Arcology incident, nation states (well, the UCAS at least) have been getting back on the scene.
And she's now president of the UCAS...

The megacorps would step in to stop this, because it is in their best interest, if there are weak political leaders, who they can bribe the heck out of instead of unreliable and unstable never-do-wells.

Bye
Thanee

If the megacorps could act together than they could take out the government's publicly and with little trouble.

But they don't want to rule. So long as the governments behave, the megacorps don't care. And one of the things that gets an Omega Order called on you is getting caught overthrowing a government. Publicly taking out a president or the like meets this requirement.

Heh, if the megacorps take out the government then they'll have to do the job. And who wants to deal with all that crap?

Yeah, but they could probably outsource the work to cheaper, more efficient Asian bureaucrats.

This has always been a point of contention with me:
"If the megacorps acted together, they could topple governments in public with no trouble."

No. Plain and simple. For a couple of reasons, actually.
1) ZO wouldn't stand for it, even if the corporate court agreed to have everbody work together to trash a bunch of national governments - assuming said governments actually mattered and weren't "The United Banana Republics of Casiotone" or something. Publicly destroying national governments erodes confidence in currencies that ZO trades in, erodes confidence in the smaller corporations based there, and generally hurts the economy. It wouldn't be beyond ZO to put severe monetary hurt on corps that tried this. That alone would be enough to put the kibosh on the AAAs working together to toss any government that mattered.
2) While the megas have a lot of military, a lot of thor shots, and a lot of nukes... I've never seen any evidence that they had all of the military and nukes. Trying to toss any national government that has a significant military and pretty much ANY nukes is a bad idea. Supposing the government in question is prominent - let's say, oh, 2070s France - they're gonna put up a fight that would make doing so a huge expense. And the threat of ANY nuclear attack on your turf, even if you have enough nukes to mop them up, makes it a no-win situation. Who wants to topple the government of a nation if you have to break the nation to get a payoff?
3) The people. People don't like being invaded. Unless you have popular support for your coup, they're going to make your life a living hell. They might still buy your products because they can't avoid it, but come on. You'll have to play police state to avoid having them attack your employees and assets. It's not worth it if the people don't want you.

It's not that they couldn't. I'm not saying the megas don't have the power. I'm just saying they couldn't do it without a bunch of problems. And those problems make the cost too high.

Seriously, though, the government would have to start really messing with corporate interests to merit that kind of interference. And given extraterritoriality and the political power of the Corporate Court, that kind of thing is pretty unlikely.

1) ZO doesn't have any power except what the megas give them and the money the megas have put into them. Technically, it is true that the megas can tell ZO what to do. Factually, ZO holds their money. If the megas all told ZO "We want our cash back now, please," somehow I don't think ZO would be too willing to give it back. They are a parasite organization. Despite where power comes from, once it is given it takes on a life of its own.

2) They own all the satellites, the comm grid, yadda yadda. Yes. However, power comes from those that are on the ground, controlling the gridwork. If a government deploys forces to prevent such a 'total cutoff', the power flows from the end of a gun, which means it's not entirely one way. It's whoever can shoot most. Plus, how do you cut off, say, "the UCAS" and not your own resources in the UCAS? You can't just shut off the whole grid, and you can't black out a nation without them IMMEDIATELY working to take that infrastructure back. What's more, the megas own the infrastructure, but are they actually the people who are working at the trunk exchanges in each major city? I'm not sure they are. That seems like contractor work.

3) People are more than annoying, people are scary. If we assume that only ten percent of the Seattle Metroplex (if it has the population of today) gets pissed at a takeover attempt, that's still 350,000 people that feel they are under outside attack by hostile forces. That's more than an annoyance, that's downright scary.

4) If every megacorporation in the world PERFECTLY executed a shutdown attempt on the UCAS - just the UCAS - and the UCAS only retains 10% of its current nuclear active stockpile (I.E. not counting weapons that could be brought back to hot/ready status), that is still 516 live nuclear warheads that could be used against the offending megacorporations. It may not be enough to destroy the megas, but it's enough to stop them, and if they responded in kind, DEFINITELY enough to reduce every metroplex in the UCAS to blackened ash.

To say that they exist is the sufferance of the corporate court is a gross simplification. They exist in tandem and in balance with the corporate court.

The megas don't "own all the satellites". They don't even own the majority of them, particularly by mass. The IJS has a huge orbital infrastructure that launches, assembles and maintains the dozens of 30,000 ton solar power satellites they own and run. It would be pretty darn rational to assume that they have a lot more than just SPS in orbit.

Yeah, I'm with Adarael on this one. Let's go over the steps, here.

First you convince all the AAA corps, as well as Lone Star, Doc Wagon, and some other AAs that they should overthrow the governments of the world.

Then you go to Zurich Orbital, which I like to think of as a Federal Reserve on cybersteroids, and convince them that taking this action won't completely and utterly destabilize the world economy for years, maybe decades to come.

Then the action starts. Ares starts firing Thor Shots. Aztechnology summons Bloodzilla. Renraku, MCT, and NeoNET, their powers combined, create Jormungand v2.0. And stuff. You know, whatever.

Japan takes those energy satellites they have and turns the power up to "Extra Crispy" and points them at the headquarters of all the Asia-based Megacorps, that's something like half of them. The UCAS nukes the hell out of every damn thing. Nothing happens in Europe, because there is nothing you can say or do to convince me that Lofwyr would have gone along with this plan, but if he did, I'd say Saeder-Krupp actually stands the best chance out of any of the megas - it might actually take over most of Europe.

And what if, after this, the combined might of the megacorps did overpower the nations, and they're now ushering in a new age of economic tyranny, unfettered by lip service to some antiquated governments? I was reading a book about aliens coming to invade Earth (Animorphs, if anyone cares), and one of the alien generals asks why they don't just stomp on the puny earthlings with their superior technology, rather than quietly infiltrating their ranks. The smarter general answers that there are six billion people on this chunk of rock, and if each of them fired only one bullet, it would still be enough to destroy the entire alien force a bunch of times over. There would be a lot of defections from the megacorp ranks, and people would boycott them in the sense of shooting their employees in the face, and in short order the megacorps would not be able to maintain their hold on the planet. The people would form new governments, and probably issue new, highly restrictive laws on megacorps - like, you know, extraterritoriality was a bad idea, we're getting rid of that now.

And that's how the end of the world goes!

True megacorporate hegemony is unsustainable, as we very well know. It was tried before and it was called Socialism. We all know how that turned out.

Megas can't work without constant external economic infusion. Take away the nations and you just create a bunch of isolationist socialist fiefdoms which are all doomed to collapse.

The real power of the megacorps, of course, lies not in military might but in the ability to impose trade sanctions. If the big ten pull out of your country, they all take huge hits to their bottom line but your economy practically ceases to exist.

Well I thought part of the point with Shadowrun is that ALL countries are simply Banana Republics. That no single nation is as powerful as a single Megacorp.

Why isn't everything all the same? Doesn't the same thing work the same way for everyone? There's only one right way and everything must do it that way right?

Why would anyone take over the govenment in 2070 anyway? They don;t seem to do anything

-> Law enforcement is run by private sector

-> Majority of hospitals are private sector

-> Most of the military industrial complex is private sector

-> Welfare doesn't seem to exist, but even if it did all the poor people have no SIN so couldn;t get it anyway.

-> According to the perps around here, education system has been mostly privatised.

The big spending areas of most governments are, in some sort of order, Welfare, Health, Defense and Education.

Shadowrun governments have been gutted for A, B and D, and also their tax base has all run off to mega corps so i;'m not sure how they pay for C.

So the conclusion is shadowrun governments are a big joke. Taking them over would seem to convey all the prestige of taking over some banana republic backwater. I'm not even sure why they exist except to gloss over the absolute stupidity of ex territoriality as a concept.

While the militatry-industrial complex may be run in large part by corps, there are a number of sources which suggest that national defense is still the purview of nations. For example, it was JIS Marines who sat in SF. The money came from the megas, but the JIS military is what enabled it to conquer so much of SE asia. Likewise, Stoner-Ares produced the Stonewall MBT in Rigger 1 for the CAS Army, not for their own private forces. Amazonia has a national military, as does the Sioux Nation, TT, and the UCAS. So national defense is definitely something governments still do.

Infrastructure is also another thing that the governments do, from top to bottom. Roads, public transport, gridguide, sewers, water, et cetera is national.

I disagree that education is privatized. I submit that only higher education (college up) is largely privatized. Even so, UC Fuchi Berkeley wasn't owned by Fuchi, just very heavily funded.

Federal law enforcement is also national. The UCAS has an FBI - an agent was an NPC in Double Exposure.

Well I think that was because Japan is apparently a special case because at the time most Megas were Japanese, and they still had old style nationalist feelings. I get the impression those days in Shadowrun are starting to fade. Also there have been successful invasions in the past as well. I mean the Allies after WW2 Effectively took over Japan and Germany. This obviously wasn't permenant, but there have been more permenant cases. Look at 1066 and the Norman invasion, Also if I remember China's been invaded quite a few times. Hell if you are in the US you are pretty much in a country that was invaded and purged of its natives. I'm not saying invasions are right, or even that they are easy. However despite current trends it has been done.
Actually extraterritorality kind of raises the question of why exactly crime familys exist. I mean why not get a corp say whatever money making crime you like is legal in your area, and then get cracking. I mean gambling, prostitution, and manufacturing of illegal BTLs and Narcotics would be legal on your own sovereign territory right?
Unless I have this wrong the country outside the Megacorp's territory would have as much say in the matter as the USA over pot in Amsterdam.

Bad publicity. The Mega's have their hands in a lot of illicit trades but it's under the table so that they have deniability

I always pictured the SR universe in this regard as a very finely balanced thing in that regard - The Megas can't topple over the nations, nor the nations topple over the Megas as an institution, because if they did everything would come toppling down.

Either wouldn't Mind if the other were "eased out of the picture" - but even that would happen over generations.

In the final analysis, though, the edge seems to be with the nation-state: The megas can't continue without the nation-state providing all the "backend" services, but the nation-state, while it would be wounded severely, could survive if Megas did not have extraterritoriality.

The problem is, of course, that the nation-states could only shift the situation definitively, if only moderately, with concerted action - something not exactly easy.

Really? I was under the impression that for the top ten Megas, Nations are simply convient. Since a well run Megacorp has all the things it really, direly needs run internally. Hence why it is considered, and occasionally refered to as corperate feudalism. I mean you have corperations that have the ability to have a completely internal *space program*, and not as a one off, or as your entire enterprize, but a wing of your business.