I have issues with Wal-Mart so maybe I'm baised; however, they seem to be the most likely candidate for a SR-style Megacorp.

Wal-Mart In-store Clinic

Just thought that I would share.

Aren't Megacorps supposed to be international, as far as I know there's only Wallies in America

When a wal-mart adds an upper floor for employee apartments (of course taking a cut out of their pay for such). Then we're another step further.

new york

Wal*Mart, though monstrous, is not even close to being on the scale of a mega. At the time of Corporate Download, Chromed Accountant claimed that the Big Ten accounted for over half of the world gross product.

~J

Walmart exists in 15 of the 194 nations of the world, I've been round Europe quite a bit, and i never ever even seen one.. Geez, not everything is about the big guys in east and west / Annoyed European

Wal Mart tries to become international, but at least in Germany, they had to close down their operations.
People just boycotted them due to their terrible rep (and we already have Schlecker and Lidl as the exploitative store chains).

As far as megacorp behaviour is concerned, take a look at western Africa.
You know, that place where companies like Shell, Elf Aquitaine and so on hire private armies to protect their assets.
Well, in fact, everybody there hires his private army if he can afford it, up to and including tanks, artillery, helicopters and fighter jets.
No, not in 2070.
Now.

Just waiting for the day when the first real corporate war breaks out down there.

http://www.walmartstores.com/GlobalWMStore...gate.do?catg=14

Yeah, checked it up Crypto.. As i suspected almost non-existant in Europe praise the lord that we havent been all americified

Oh we're coming Lionhearted, you WILL embrace our apple pie eating, hamburger shitting lifestyle damnit!

OBEY!!! OBEY!!!

Besides, you guys don't even have guns. How are you going to stop us? Laws? MOO HOO! HA HA! Fools!

*ducks*

You may enslave our bodies, You might blind our eyes, You may fool our brains, but you will NEVER ever own our souls!
Three words Omae, Three words that will never stop ringing, three words that will send shivers down your pseudo-european discarded trash ass, Viva la revolution!

Anarchist-4-Life

Wait a minute?
no guns, whatta.. Sweden happen to have some of the best trained, best equipped artic forces in the world.
(Had some american guys here last year, NAVY SEAL or something like that, they couldnt pass the obligatory obstacle course)
No hard feelings aight?

Bodies and money is all the important parts. You can keep your souls. I understand that in Europe they belong to Allah anyhow.

Nah here you can't believe in god, "but I believe in something tihi" welcome to sweden the proud most atheistic country in the world

Swedes! Bah!

Actually didn't you guys kick the crap out of the Nazi's and the Russian in a 20 year time span?

Maybe we'll leave the Swedes... For now.

And we won't own your souls until we can conjure up some decent ancestor soul binders. It's only a matter of time. EMBRACE THE BENEVOLENT BUT FIRM EMPIRE OF AMERICA! EMBRACE IT OR LIVE IN MORTAL PERIL!

Man! This feels good! Maybe I should vote of Guiliani (although I've recently become aware he dropped out. Thank god.)

I would also like to note that I would have only been shocked if you announced that you had the best equipped and trained JUNGLE force in the world. I would have also been deeply amused.

Wal-Mart may/may not be heading towards Mega.


However, These guys have them long beaten for the title of first Megacorporation.

Actually that was Finland, Sweden was wozzy neutral with some wanna-be nazi during WW2
However we kicked the living hell outta Russia, Denmark, Poland, and Germany all at the same time about 400 years ago, then the king got shot.. by his own forces
Oh, wait and see amigo, goverment secrets you know :o

Ah Finland.

*calls over his shoulder*
It's cool boys! We can still do Sweden! Lets give them democracy or else!

I'm not sure if citing a 400 year old ass whupping, no matter how spectacular, is much call for future pride.

I mean, Armenia owned like half the world at some point. Granted that was also at the dawn of recorded history iirc but hey, my Armenian friends still go to great lengths to point that out to me.

Actually Hitler avoided Switzerland completely because their version of Neutrality (we're neutral and all of our citizens have guns to keep it that way) seemed to be not worth the effort.

That'll be great when then next conflict breaks out over the valuable territory up there.

...

Oh.

I'm confused, didn't people stop going to malls and start using supermarkets, because they were easier to navigate and generally more convenient...

Is this mallification of the supermarket just a reaction to webretail reducing brickstore sales, thus - similar to accepting slim to nil margins on beer and soda products - they are trying to create a need to visit stores in the flesh and hopefully impulse buy?

Anyway, Wal-Mart doesn't have enough of a horizontal monopoly to be a true megacorp. You have to own the companies that mine the iron, smelt the steel, and build the trucks that transport the toys from the factories which assemble them from the feed stock you refine to the kiosks where you sell them...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/switzerland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sweden

Swedes= people from sweden
Swiss= people or things from switzenland

geez, whats next? Polar bears roaming the streets?



One word: Uranium



Never said I was proud of being swedish im hell glad im not a fullblood, whole country is cooking with prejudice, stupid politics and ignorance (but not even close to that of those americans often portrayed by media, and/or youtube)

Shadowdragon8685 beat me to it. 250 years of straight runnin' shit--Wal-Mart's got a ways to go.

That's the definition of a vertical monopoly (i.e. Standard Oil before the breakup). A horizontal monopoly would be like from Demolition man. The only restaurant in existance is... Taco Bell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_integration

My mistake... I apparently can't differentiate one state in the European Union from another...

That's coo' I can't remember all the states on top of my mind either

Nestle and big Oil both have the jump on wal-mart by a very, very wide margin. I daresay even Ikea shows more aspirations to meeting Shadowrun megacorp requirements than wally world (Ikea is now opening up its own Ikea hotels for people to sleep on-site, something Wal-Mart isn't even CONSIDERING).

Why polar bears? Because they're the most vicious killers in the animal kingdom, that's why. (props to the Kevin Smith Superman interview)

So being an atheist country hasn't cured you of all your worries? Boy! Wait till I let the guys at work get an earful of that! (News Flash! People still dumb! Just differently dumb!)

And uranium huh? Maybe we can enslave the awakened polar bears to dig it out for us.

I think my plan to invade Sweden (or Switzerland, American's don't know the difference anyways right?) will be to use giant mirrors to melt all your snow so we attack while your army is still trying to get it's snow shoes off.


God. Ikea Run. The dullest high threat run in all of existence.

"We're running against Ikea for how much?"
"30k a head"
"Jesus's that a lot of yen. What are we taking? Drones, drugs, software?"
"Uhm... a couple of nice tables and some tasteful decorations. Our main concern is to clear their zero zone, it's right next to the kiosk that sells breakfast sausage..."

Listen to Nezumi and beware of the swedish megacorp :O
Well atleast most don't believe the grand canyon can be flooded in five times the speed of sound (props some anti-creationist at youtube)
Great plan! Can I join?
only a ity bity problem.. I haven't seen snow last for more than two days the last three years

And because it was a convenient place to stash gold and stolen art even without invading them.
Plus, they got chocolate and hilarious accents.


BTT : i think you are all missing the most crucial point about megas (which is nothing to be ashamed of, the guys at FanPro Germany have never realized it either).

It's not the sheer size, it's not how totalitarian their attitude towards indoctrinating their employees is and it's certainly not just building housing structures adjacent to the factories so employees don't have to commute.
It's not being exploitative,ruthless swine and it's not making people buy the very products they have produced with their own hands while completely alienating them from the working process (god, am i sounding marxist today...i'll have to politically readjust to pragmatic/cynic social democrat sellout later).

Except for the scale of these things going on, these are all phenomena that have been observable for decades next door to me (and probably next to your door, too, especially when you're from the rust belt).
Globally speaking, this has happpened at least since the start of the industrial revolution.

That's not what makes a mega a mega.

The key issue is being extraterritorial.
That's what is setting SR megas distinctly apart from every modern day company.
Being sovereign states in their own right.

Well than what the hell good is it to have the baddest snow based ass kickers on the planet? Will you guys flood your streets with artificial snow just to spite us?

That's it! Call in the orbital strikes, these meatball eaters are starting to piss me off!

Ah, point Ras. That's all that a mega needs to be considered a mega. The rest is just window dressing. If Renraku went half bankrupt tomorrow they would still be a mega because no government could legally take back the area or people they own. That's a lot of power.

Oh this American knows the difference... one is northern Europe, the other is central.. I just read one and think the other... probably because I keep forgetting Sweden exists until somebody reminds me... Switzerland I read about... a few times and have come to respect and fear... the only country I know of to put tank traps on every road entering the country.

That's switzerland again... Swiss meat balls come from the Swiss, not the Swedes...

They are also the only country that has enough bomb shelters to protect their entire population from a nuclear attack.

They'll be enjoying their good chocolate and funny accents while the rest of us reenact all the boring parts of Fallout 2.

I thought they were swedish meatballs not swiss meatballs?
See, this is why we need to invade so we can change their damn name so we don't get confused anymore.

I propose we call them Blue and be done with it.

Nah, that's just special forces, we got other guys aswell as the SSG (Who is equal to Deltas) and ofc all those rigged jets we sold, to bad you havent bought any yet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAS_39_Gripen
Rule 1: never attack a neutral country, i would gladly sacrifice some forests and cities to have the entire EU up your ass

That's because a shopping spree at WalMart isn't an epic quest inevitably leading to a marital crisis, a nervous breakdown, homicidal mania or all of the above.
Ikea needs hotels on-site to lodge collapsed customers.

swedish meatballs

I thought so, too.
Kötbullar, available at every Ikea after you're done collapsing.

Bah, we scoff at your funky Eurofighter knockoff jets and lay waste to your forces with uhm uhm..

Oh wait we built that overpriced F-22 didn't we? Should of went with the other design? Better handling? Looked cooler? Damn, screwed again.

Ok I give up... are you sure there's a difference?

Can we just change one of your countries to something else? say witzerland or weden? So we can have swedes and witzes or Swiss and wedes?

Consuming is the only known american culture (George Carlin )
And if you ask me, THIS (NSFW demanded) Guess what... if it's 'NSFW', it doesn't need to get linked here.
is the real swedish treasure cove

Might want to nsfw that last link there Lionhearted.


Not that I wasn't appreciative, mind you.

Nsfw?
If you are talking about ingraining it in a word, please do tell how I do

I just meant a "not safe for work," warning, which has become fairly common internet forum practice for shielding us poor bastards at work. Us lazy shmucks in the US are notorious for goofing around on the 'net when we're on break (or should be working ) and our prudish business practices means that if we do get caught using the internet for goofing around, it had better not be while we're looking at cute swedish girls with nice... eyes.

I'd have to consider natural resources like that very safe for work

Just remember, fellow Americans, Switzerland is in Europe because that's where the Nazis attacked. Sweden is by Canada because it's so cold. That's how I keep them straight.

Just briefly on the Walmart thing, as a UK resident I can tell you that Walmart own a store chain over here called Asda, which is one of the ... five perhaps biggest Supermarkets in the country, its not been rebranded to the public yet, but a friend of mine who actually works for the company said recently that some of the internal documentation is starting to be letterheaded WalMart :O

I don't think we're missing that fact, but it's just the title of many facets, the rubber stamp on what a megacorp is.

Gustavus Adophus, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither that Holy nor that Roman. Also a total nut job in his own noble way. If he was English I'd have said he was the reincarnation of King Arthur but England was saddled with foppish King Charles.

One of the best mixed force generals of his time, and Pappenheim and Wallenstein were nothing to sneeze at. Then there was Richelieu.

Good times for military scholars to read about; absolute crap to live through.

Let's get back to the topic at hand and drop matters of Swede nationalism and other only tangently related material, as this thread is wandering way of course.

As for NSFW links:

QUOTE (Terms of Service)

3. No sexually explicit or offensive material. This includes links leading to materials of this nature. DSF is accessed by many people in many different settings, and we want the forum to remain accessible to everyone.

This was pretty tame especially compared to others in the past, but the rule still stands.

Ah, sorry... Sexual content here usually means something more severe, but I'll keep that in mind