I've worked a couple of shit jobs in my life; short order cook, waiter, security guard (oiy), deck seaman... etc. I've always hated working in dead end jobs but I've always appreciated the perspective it gave me (you know, later, over beers... when I'm at a better gig).

Life in the Sixth world is dramatically different than the one we lead today. When I was busy buffing the floors today (some things never change) I got to thinking about what crappy jobs are still around and which ones have been automated out of existence. The only one that leapt to mind was "Stuffer Shack Clerk" and "B Team Security Guard". I'd assume that jobs like "short order cook" and "stocking clerk" have probably been automated in most "civilized" society but continue to thrive along the fringes like the Barrens or Ork Underground.

But what say you DS? What crappy jobs have you had and what jobs do you think Joe "I Really Should Start Classes At City College" Schmuckatelly is working at?

When the alternative is 'starve to death so your corpse is gnawed on by ghouls', almost no job is a bad job. In Shadowrun, there are people who will literally kill other people for a steady job buffing floors.

That said, there are still some pretty ratty jobs in the SR world, such as:
Working for Universal Brotherhood
Being an involuntary cyberzombie (i.e. - test subject)
Being invited to tag along with that strange Azlan mage as he's off on an important mission
Providing critical corpse guarding services
Working in a bunraku parlor or, perhaps worse, working in a non-bunraku parlor
Public school teacher
The lower quarter of all positions in a gang
A 'defense contractor' getting sent in in response to an ongoing shadowrun

Call Centre Tech Support. A job so bad, they banned SINers from ever having to do it, and now only give it to SINless people at much less than minimum wage.

Taxi Drivers (Mostly Orks, as the Low-Light vision and intimidating body allows for insurance reductions).

Janitor at Facility likely to be raided by Shadowrunners.

Bank Loan Officer (For that "Personal Touch").

Lone Star Officer on Traffic Duty (Handing out parking tickets to people with short tempers and big guns!).

Exterminator (Bugs and Devil/Demon Rats, 'nuff said!).

Truant Officer.

Yeah, exterminators must be like repo men in 2070. One of those jobs with incredible mortality rates that you just never think about.

What's the worst part of your job Halben?
Oh it's definitely the DEEP CROWS! DEEP CROWS!!!!!! Agggggh.

Hehe.. Deep Crows.

I have worked as a gas meter reader and as a gas station night clerk, but both of those jobs would probably not exist in 2070.

I'm not sure what unskilled jobs would still exist, considering how smart (and cheap in the long term) a pilot program would be. Building site labourers still have a role by cannon (they're referred to in the description of the Beaver drone in Arsenal). Plugging knowsofts into someone would make them work quite well as call centre tech support, arguably better than an agent. Some people would still make a living selling stuff from street kiosks, even though they'd be competing with fully automated Stuffer Shacks (if you have such things). I suspect jobs like short order cook would still be about, since I'd guess you have to be quite flexible which I'm not sure drones could do so well.

I'm actually of the school of thought that most short orders cooks are going to be out of a job in 60 Shadowrun years. If we're just talking about making hamburgers, eggs, hashbrowns, etc. it seems that the drones in 2070 should be capable of doing that on the cheap. The only place I still see short order cooks is in places like the Ork Underground where machines just haven't quiet mastered cooking devil rat just right.

For the record, aren't devil rats described as being horribly diseased? Wouldn't that mean you don't want to culture a taste for them?

I figure that most jobs are 'professional' in the SR verse, but they are also high intensity. Everyone is putting in long hours for the big bucks.

The exceptions are various jobs that are only done by humans because of distaste for robots thanks to hackers and the renraku archeology etc. Making burgers isn't one of those, but hair dresser probably is. Sales assistants may be depending on the store. At 'fashion label' botiques for example, their will be real human staff, but at wal-mart.. well, wal-mart has been replaced with Super Star Trak express and amazon.com.

Unskilled labour has no purpose, but high value add goods and electronically delivered services are very cheap - commodities may actually be quite expensive as big reserves of them are just inaccessable thanks to disasters in australia, south america, russia, etc.

I don't know that automation would have necessarily supplanted the short order cook. It might've, but machines break, and repairmen are harder to get hold of than low level employees... you could certainly have a wonky auto-cook in your locl greasy spoon, though. Would make nice background colour.

Whoever has to clean up after the various Great Dragons' pooping definitely got a raw deal. Probably a whole team of them rather than just one.

Two things:

1. Your low level job is safe if any portion of the value chain makes it cheaper to pay a meat body rather than operate a robot. e.g. Modern factories are mostly automated now; however, there are some portions where it is still cheaper to have a human flip the part over or move it from one mold to another as a robot would be too expensive or too complex as compared to the guy making 15 USD / hour.

2. My low level jobs have included janitor, trash can clearer/repairer (ask if you want details) and pizza delivery driver. I prefer the delivery driver position and I have a hard time seeing that one automated, even in 2070.

Flying drones can go in a straight line at high speed, don't take time off and do not take tips (reducing the cost for the customer means more sales). With the world being wireless, it can even ring the doorbell after leaving the pizzas on the doorstep and will be able to navigate perfectly well. Since most people in 2070 don't even make use of credsticks, they'll be pretty comfortable with paying electronically.

I admit that a Kull might not be the right drone for the job, but being able to deliver at 100 m/s (220 MPH) is also pretty cool.

...low rung Metroplex bus driver - "great, I pulled the 117 local to Puyallup again..."

Yes, definitely do recollect, the cost of a drone isn't just the up-front nuyen cost, but the cost of power, regular maintenance, repairs, security (robots make for great scrap!) training at all levels for those who operate or deal with the computer, infrastructure to support software updates, robot workers' union costs, etc. And after that, the damn thing still doesn't boot up right. In many ways, robots get treated better than metahumans because, hey, you already paid for the robot, but you're only leasing the human.

So since it's now legal in many places to pay less than minimum wage (given the lifestyle costs listed, I'd expect people to regularly be content to make $8/hour - enough to support a family of 4 working a measly 10 hour day, with a little left over for BTLs), about $7k a year. You'd be hard pressed to find a drone that cheap and that reliable (i.e. - you can fire the person and get a new one pretty easily).

In Shadowrun, it's important to think more along the lines of industrial revolution England - a TON of people who are starving to death and with no legal protections - rathern than 21st century US.

I also see some corps having collectivist systems: you don't get a wage, or the small wage you get is just pocket money. The corp gives you all the shelter, clothes, food and leisure you need (they consider you need, actually)

Check out a series on Discovery Channel called "Dirty Jobs".

I believe this is the sound of the hammer striking the head of the nail. The bad migrant worker farms today and the indentured servants of ages past are probably better suiting to modeling the type of "pay" that wageslaves get. They may not be slaves in the way that we think of the term; however, they don't really own anything that doesn't - in some way - belong to the corp.

I've only seen a couple episodes, but its fascinating... in a morbid sort of way. There are some really lousy jobs out there.

I know Nas hates taking the Bus. He blocked out the bus ride by reliving the worst day of his life.

As for bad jobs, Material Collecting for "Mass-Produced Magical Items". Being handed a pick and bucket and told to go mine gold for bare survival wages in some Aztlan hellhole. And that's if you're *NOT* a prisoner!

Could be worse, however, and now we go to the really shitty job...

Blood Mage's Assistant.

Faster delivery is more popular with the middle class, who have more money to spend on luxuries like convenient food but do not have enough to hire a chef and are therefore a good target market. I point again to the fact that the drone does not get paid and does not expect a tip and is unlikely to have a maintenance cost on par with that of a conventional delivery vehicle and the cost of the metahuman's wage, this means that the delivery price is lower and a lower price will increase consumption and therefore profit (ie lowers deadweight loss).

You cannot guarantee a good state of maintenance on a vehicle owned by one of the working poor that you are obsessed with, and a poorly maintained vehicle is more likely to break delivery time guarantees. Since these working poor of yours have other concerns apart from keeping of the delivery time policies of their employer, and do not possess accurate data about the failure rates of their vehicles based on maintenance profiles, they are unlikely to make the optimal decisions from an employer's perspective. They will choose to spend their money on food and drugs and keeping the gangs off their backs instead of keeping their delivery vehicle in top condition, therefore delivery vehicle maintenance will be, more often than not, covered by their employers.

Delivery vehicles sized for metahumans are going to be larger than drones, therefore they will weigh more and will require more powerful engines. Power is at odds with maintainability, for every engine that is so powerful and so maintainable (these "so"s mean a given level) it can be transplanted into the smaller, lighter drone and move the vehicle faster or it can be made more efficient or maintainable and move the drone at the same speed. Drone maintenance or fuel is going to be cheaper for a given delivery envelope.

I am assuming that you recognise that corps are going to have sensible responses to incentives, instead of acting solely to cause unnecessary and economically inefficient discomfort to metahumanity. SR makes a number of assumptions that are well published, I have never seen it published that they assume that all managers in corps are a bizarre subspecies of metahumanity that universally gain sadistic pleasure from tormenting their underlings (I thought they were spineless, gutless weaklings that responded only to profit motives).

Since anyone who does make use of drones will make more money, they'll rapidly expand operations and make more money. Then they'll take over the industry by buying out or out-competing all other entrants, or force them to resort to using the same tactics. In business you can't have a code of honour unless it gets you more sales.

(Aha! Wall of text specialisation comes into play!)

Bull milker. Definitely, bull milker.

Awakened bull milker.

Not sure what my statement has to do with your explanation. However, let me address the point in bold. Having worked in delivery, you are expected to pay for your own maintenance. You can't get your car to run? Your manager might - might - let you work inside making something. Normally, you are told that you can go home and don't get paid for that night. Been there, done that.

In general, I have no objection to what you are saying as it makes sense; however, I ask you to look at this from outside the POV of just delivery. There are some jobs where humans - with all their quirks and failings - are cheaper than robots. Not better, not faster, not more efficient, just cheaper: there is your profit motive. Taken to the extreme, your logic leads us to a society of haves with robotic servants and have-nots with nothing. If that is how you interpret SR, that's fine by me. It's just not my interpretation.

...Houngan's assistant.

It may have been a little mental crosstalk or static. I am, at times, totally clueless like a newborn child.

There are things that drones can't do well, mostly intuition or based on the necessary multifunctional nature of the metahuman body, and social tasks are also of importance. To my mind there are always going to be jobs that only metahumanity can fulfil without creating minds equal to ourselves. However, the most mechanistic of tasks are not going to be a safe domain for metahumans. In the pizza delivery example, there will be space for lightly trained drone monitoring staff to exercise metahuman discretion in reacting to situations in which the programmed responses are insufficient.

Which isn't too bad, as they usually don't abuse people (except in hollywood flicks and extortion racket scams). And you buy into that religion anyway, so you should be honored serving your community.

One of the worst jobs has to be sulfur mining.

There is a trend now to install kill switches in cars currently under payments - fail to make your payments and your car goes "zzzzzt."

Although you gotta admit, "repo man" would be a helluva day job for the average runner: "I left the UCAS military and went to work for Slimy Sam's Car Sales, collections division. I got shot at less in the Army."

-Siege

I can understand that. I got run off the road several years ago and the tow truck driver that picked me up let me ride up front with him. He decided for some reason to share his gun collection with me. He had a 9mm in his side holster, a snub-nosed 45 in his boot, another 9mm under the seat, a long-barrel 45 in the glove box and a shotgun behind the seat. I innocently asked, "What do you do that you need all these guns?" His reply, "I work repo on the side."

Damn... I want to be a RepoMan now, and get all the cool guns!

Watched the movie enough times, I should know the basics of it.

Just make sure I don't repo the radioactive car.

Yeah, i can't imagine repo man getting any easier in 2070. Especially if you're a drone repo man...

Hmmm.. Surely you can just send the drone a message informing it that its owner has defaulted on his payment, and it should return home.

Kinda like how, when its operational life has expired, a drone is sent notification that its replacement is coming and the original should prepare itself for silicon heaven

Wow, I really want to do a one off repo man run

"I have been a Good Drone, and now go where all the Toasters fly!" "That's a MacOS Screen Saver."

....this gives me a bad idea for a 3D render...

It's my take that millions of shitty jobs that could easily be done by a drone are still done by poorly paid people who are constantly afraid that the drones will take their jobs.

It's because the consumer corporate culture isn't so much about making more money as it is about controlling people. Sure, those drones can do a job more efficient, but then there's a person who isn't working. They may convienently starve to death, but more likely they'll find some way to keep eating and sleeping. Maybe they find a way that doesn't involve putting their time and energy where the corps want it. Maybe he finds he likes being independant. Maybe he gets together with other people, and they cooperate, and create a community, and it forms a viable alternative... maybe it's a small chance, one in a million, but if you unemploy millions, it'll happen. The Poor must be kept as busy as possible to prevent revolution. Only a small number are allowed to fall out the bottom, and then only so that there is homelessness to threaten your workers with.

That's what shit-end jobs are about. It's about keeping you busy doing the work of the company instead of working for yourself. It's about control. So that drone that can do your job better isn't there to replace you, it's there to make you work harder out of the fear you'll be replaced. What labor organizing and government interference is allowed fights for the rights of workers to be employed, and helps people find work. Low wage laborers literally fight to keep doing their shitty jobs for the man.

So never mind that RFID tags and commlinks mean that there's no real need for cashiers anymore: there's still an overworked, underpaid cashier behind the counter. Despite being less expensive, janitor drones are only used in places where rich people don't want to see poor people. Real people clean the sewers by hand and are thankful.


Besides, drones have this annoying tendency to be hacked by ninth graders with stock commlinks.....

"ZOMG! Kyle! I just hacked a welding drone!"

Yeah, that won't end well...
-paws

I think the nature of the dirty job depends a lot on where its at. Upscale establishments would likely use humans for the touch and feel of a real person. Middle level ones would use drones, and of course the low level ones might not be able to pay anything but salaries.

Check out the first-edition book Neo-Anarchists Guide to Real Life. They have a chain, called McHughs, that runs solely on automated cooks. There is a manager, not always onsite, who monitors breakdowns and the like. So, what you suggest isn't very far-fetched for Shadowrun.

Still, there'll always be a place for the late night small greasy spoon diners, such as waffle house that will not go automated. The folks will go there for the atmosphere of a server and short order cook filling orders such as hash browns that are scattered, covered, smothered. The McHugh's will go automated because you don't see the cooks anyway, so going the automated route and removing some more of the staff is not a far stretch, but there will also be around the short order cooks for some places.
Plus, the higher end places will have cooks too with the kitchen that is open to the dining area so people can see and think, 'wow, I'm affording those who will cook for me rather than some drone. Yeah, we're being slightly higher class!'.

Thank you for posting, Platonic. Of course your question touches on one of the basic biological impulses, with all its hopes and fears for the luxury of individuals. I also detect some unspoken questions. Do authority figures really know what is best for us? What gives them the right to make these decisions for us? Will they ever pay me to sit on my ass being all anti-authoritarian?

Allow me to address the anxieties underlying your concerns, rather than try to answer every question you might have left unvoiced. Firstly, there are always alternatives to working in a shitty job - they're uniformly worse than working a shitty job, and that is why people work shitty jobs. People will allow themselves to be "overworked" because being able to sit down with a beer and a pizza and turn the TV to something mind-rotting is worth every drop of sweat and hair-greying second. People complain about being "overworked" because people would rather be paid the same amount but work less. Offer the complainers the chance to work less and take less pay as a result and guess what? They probably won't take it. It's not like corps won't have tried this offer before.

The grumblings of those who think they can get the listener to give them something for free out of a sense of sympathy are incessant and meaningless - they are an attempt to trick you. Companies do not want to control you, they are not afraid of you finding something "better" because if there was truly something better you wouldn't be working for them. Every additional hour of the day that you work for a corp is an hour you choose to work instead of masturbating to some cheap porn or lying in a drunken stupor on your bed, you choose it because that extra hour buys you the beer, the porn, the pizza, the hookers.

As for this revolution you speak of, why would the poor be kept busy to prevent them from rising up? There is some strange logic going on here, how would inconveniencing the potential revolutionaries do anything but make the revolution more likely? I assume, of course, that the revolution is an expression of discontent instead of some strange divine mandate (and thus spake god Marx; the revolution must occur, except if you're being kept busy by your employers - then we can delay indefinitely). I also assume that being "overworked" causes a degree of discontent. So why would being "overworked" prevent an event that is the result of discontent? Contentment is what stops revolution - beer, porn, pizza (or pasta if that's your kind of thing), hookers, drugs and comfortable chairs (you heard it here first) stop the proletariat from murdering and raping their better paid fellows, by being inherently enjoyable.

As for a "viable alternative", subsistence agriculture is the worst job in the world. There's a reason why we don't grow our own food anymore and it's not because the corporate overseers have stolen the knowledge from our heads (though I swear I've heard that kind of rationalisation before). So, if they're not growing their own food they must be buying it and to do that they will need money. They'll need to provide a service or product to get money, and then they'll want to rent a hooker for a night so they'll work longer hours and suddenly they're doing the same old thing all over again - working long hours so they can afford more luxuries. Seriously, the alternatives are worse than the work. More importantly, the only thing that will be different is the fact that they are working "for themselves" as opposed to working for an employer so they can get money to get a crate of beer for themselves.

As for drones getting hacked, we have another thread in this forum where Nezumi posted a number of security strategies to make that less easy.

My examples of luxuries are crude, because the working class (most numerous of the "overworked") do not often find Stravinskiy to their liking.

(My cybercombat specialisation comes in handy once again!)

Stravinsky? ...wasn't he one of the contestants on "American Idol" last season?

Personally, I am partial to Mozart...but back on topic:

I'd have to say that the biggest problem with drones is that they are not consumers. Corps need consumers to sustain their profits. no profit= no growth= no investors= no corp.

I think there will always be shit jobs and folks to work them. I worked Food Service for 15 years. I am very familiar with dead end, underpaid, overworked positions. It took me 14.9 years to get to manager and .1 year to realize that unless I changed fields or got some more education, I would spend the rest of my life working 80 hour weeks and getting paid less than the employees I was in charge of. I used to call my self " The mayonnaise that holds the shit sandwich together"

In Shadowrun I think that there would be a lot of small businesses such as noodle stands, garages, ect. that fly under the radar of the powers that be. Ares doesn't give a crap if Arnold the fry cook sets up a greasy spoon in a zone that is barely patrolled anyway. and since Arnie hires folks who don't exist (SINless). he can do pretty much what he wants

I always figured that sweat shops would be common for the same reason that they exist today. People who are starving don't give drek about minimum wage. If I was SINless and needed to feed my family and you offered me enough to do that . hell yes I'd take the 14 hour shifts in a damp warehouse welding barrels on to knock off TMP's.
the only other choice would be to watch my kids starve to death.

As one barrens rat once told me" Necessity is a Mother.."

As for what would be a shitty job in 2070?
Hmm, P-fixed Fluffer in Troll porn?
A street dentist who works on Ghouls?
or the janitor who has to clean up all the chunky salsa that some shadow teams leave all over any target they visit?

...I have the infamous Flapjack House in Seattle. Surly waitresses, pots of soycaff at your table, Breakfast served until ??? . A fave of the PC runner team.

Lawyer for a megacorp (not bad if you have no scruples)

Activist for a non-profit organization

Shadowrunner without health insurance

Troll porn star

Drug/Cyberware tester

Used cyberware salesman

Public Relations representative for a Dragon

Wendigo Cultist

Matrix Board Administrator

Sounds a bit like the real-world Beth's Cafe. It's probably the most famous greasy spoon in Seattle; known for unending hash browns and 12-egg omelettes. I can definitely agree that it'd stay non-automated.

Insanely lucky lottery winner (public identity)
Hell Hound Trainer
Wage slave
Murder-bot 3000 repairman
Shadowrunner Negotiator- Nothing is worse than trying to reason with criminals armed with cyberguns and magic.

Aye, small businesses without the capital to invest in drones will go for metahumanity. Indeed, drones do not consume. However, drones do not preclude metahuman employment and AAAs are not the only corps in the world (something people forget a lot, I think). There is still a relatively healthy job market in most countries, comprised mostly of corps that do not have the capital to absorb the abdication of entire divisions.

Even when a corp is making use of drones there will still be jobs that metahumanity has to do. Drone monitoring and maintenance are also jobs that are most efficiently staffed by metahumans because of the cost of producing and supporting the kind of complex equipment to automate the entire process. The main reason for monitoring drones is reacting to situations you can't program for and only fragging media-friendly targets (like kids and the elderly) when absolutely needed (weighing up the situation properly with regards to societal bias and other factors is not something a Pilot can do). Anything where unique situations occur within the standard operational parameters is a situation where a metahuman is better equipped to handle than a drone.

This includes social-focussed jobs, disaster recovery (at the very least in organising it), certain kinds of upkeep or maintenance, writing, and jobs in situations that electronics find it difficult to work in. After all, drones are vulnerable to environments that metahumanity is not and vice versa.

In the end drones are tools that need to developed for the situation and when you don't have enough knowledge, time or money to develop drones for the situation you won't find it efficient to deploy drones for the situation and metahumanity is the only good choice.

Well, the argument about consumers is a valid one. However, we are coming to the point where consumerism stands in the way of capitalism.

SR made the choice in favor of consumerism.

The world of 2070 coud well sustain itself (and grow in individual&overall wealth!) without most of the population, but it wouldn't be much fun to play in a deserted world now, would it?

I just can't imagine high-speed pizza delivery being taken over by drones. My SR universe would not be complete without a Snow Crash-esque cadre of Deliverators.

Hear, hear!

and probably the first thing any decent Shadows rigger would get hacked out of their drones.

Deep sea fishing could be fun. Or the divers that work on oil platforms? (Lot of rigger work there but I reckon divers would still go down.)

Thanks for the responses. I hope you don't mind if I turn this into a bit of a discussion. A bit of advice though: attempting to answer "unspoken questions" is always tricky. Sometimes they're unspoken because no one was asking them.



Not all alternatives are intrinsically shitty, but are made shittier by outside forces. Metaphor: given the choice between eating your favorite food or something else, you'd probably choose your favorite food. But if you knew it had been poisoned, you'd likely go for the non-poisoned food. Real world example: hunter gatherer cultures the world over have been content to remain hunter gatherers even when repeatedly exposed to agriculture. However, they can and have been forced to adopt agriculture when forced at gunpoint, or when agriculturalists turn their hunting grounds into farms, or when their food sources are systemically destroyed. And you mention taking less work for less pay? The Kellog company did that just before world war 2. Almost the entire company took the offer. More people were hired to work smaller shifts, on the same deal. This triggered an economic boom within the town (during the depression!) and was very popular among the work force. After Kellog died, the board tried to get everyone back on the 40 hour work week. Nearly 4/5ths of the company refused, no matter what incentives they were offered. It wasn't until 1970 that the policy was abolished, after the last worker hired under it retired. I know of no other incidence of a company offering that deal company-wide, but I know several instances of individuals going from full time to part time with the reduction in pay.



Again, if there's nothing better, it's because they've poisoned the well. In SR they've done this with rampant environmental destruction, direct funding of random violence, and by simply purchasing everything. There is no alternative has turned into we own all alternatives. Besides, people don't make entirely rational decisions, especially on the macro-scale. People tend to go the direction in keeping with their upbringing, their education and what they see on the trid. The corps control most of that for most people, and they employ the most up-to-date techniques in advertising, marketing, meme-creation and all other forms of subtle mind control. Adding to the problems of transition: change is scary, a person probably doesn't have the skills right away to live differently, And there's the whole admitting that one is wrong thing that noone is good at. It's not that being a wage slave is better, it's that it's easier.



You just about made my point there, friend. The corps have to keep the masses content, or they revolt. This means bread and circuses, hookers and blow. They need to keep those people employed so that they can afford to purchase their distractions. They have to get them tired and brain-drained enough that when they get home all they want is beer, pizza and to watch something shitty on TV. I suppose you could give away all the items of comfort, but can you honestly see the corps doing that?



Worked it have you? Viable alternatives run the gamut from hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies which worked for millions of years, to post-scarcity economies that the level of technology in shadowrun make possible. There are economies other than corporate control of production. Heck, people might trade goods and services in a free market, rather than a system where megas get their cut. Shadowrun technology levels in regards to automation, nanotechnology, the matrix and other critical techs are high enough that everybody could get the resources to live very comfortably with almost no work on anyone's part. Utopia is possible. Obviously, that's not what happened. This is weird, because it's just as logical, if not more so, to allow that to happen. Instead, the corporations have repeatedly forced new technologies (magic included) to conform to older economic models. Real world example: RIAA vs. MP3s.

One way to look at it is the flow of money. People need money to purchase corp products, corps need their stuff bought to make a profit. So they need to pay people to work for them so those people have money to buy from them. Wait, that doesn't make sense. If the money the people are spending in the corp stores came from the corp job they have, the only thing happening is that corp is getting back money they had in the first place. You can't make a profit like that.

So lets step back. The people are trading their time for money, and their money for goods. So really they are trading their time for goods. They work all day producing something, and they then can access the equivalent amount of somethings produced by other people. That's fair and equitable. And the company makes a profit... wait, they can't do that unless the worker doesn't get back the whole value of their production. OK, so the worker works all day making stuff, and receives a portion of their effort back in tradable currency to purchase goods made by other workers. And the production in excess of what they get back goes to making the stockholders and bosses richer. You'll note that money, free economies, specialization and trade aren't the issue here. It's simply that the employee generates more wealth than they receive, that wealth goes to people who claim the right by virtue of having had enough wealth in the first place to employ someone.

It's either about getting the most for yourself, or about getting the most out of people, either about production or control. If it were about production, most things could be done by drones, and the people who own drones would have little to no need to sell things on the open market. Once you own a microfac, internet access, and have the capability to have it build whatever specialized drones you needed, you no longer need to participate in an economy. Everything you ever want can be made by your personal mechanical workforce. At that point there is no longer any economic incentive for profit, a post-scarcity economy. If it were about control, however, then you'd see a breakdown far more like shadowrun canon.

Zak has it right: In a million small ways, the corps have chosen consumerism over any other alternative, and have worked to destroy or subvert any other way of living. Not because consumerism is the best system. Not because it makes the most sense. It's not even the most economically rewarding choice they could have made. But it's the system that gives them the most power. I think for the corps, it's not about getting the most, it's about making sure they get their cut of everything.

And lest the topic wander into inappropriate territory, let me specify that I don't necessarily think that this is how the real world functions. This is how I think SR functions. SR is like the real world, only everyone in every level of society is a sociopath. So basically any time I need a motivation for someone in SR, I choose the option that contains the most malice. In real life, the evil is usually outdone by the stupid in damage caused.

But it's not fun unless I get to play the role of the big bad authoritarian asshole. I enjoy playing the role, and stealing lines from Dr. Breen of HL2 fame was so very entertaining.


Ah, hunter-gatherer cultures. I heard that there was one in which most of the male members of the tribe were castrated to keep the tribes numbers to the a level that could be supported by their islands ecosystem. That's a rather half-baked heaven to me, I'd rather eat grain and work a 9-5. Simply put, hunter-gatherers cannot support the same level of population as dedicated agriculture and their food is generally crappier and they tend to die earlier. I would really rather live a longer life as a wageslave.

As for Kellogg's workers; they were being paid enough that they were maintaining a reasonable degree of luxury even after they took less pay, their lives improved by working less because in the depression goods were significantly cheaper so they could afford more luxury for less and the diminishing returns of working outweighed the additional luxury that could be afforded with the wages. In economics there is the concept of oppurtunity cost, an additional cost levied on every activity that is equal to the next best thing you could be doing with your time and resources. In a depression there are fewer choices and you're more likely to see oppurtunity costs fall, so the cost of spending time of things that are personally gratifying instead of monetarily gratifying (with the option of expending that money on things that are personally gratifying later) falls, so people do more of it, this can be as little as merely doing nothing.

The board was simply trying to get people to switch to what was more efficient for them, people refused because they could maximise their enjoyment more easily by sticking with what they already had.

You've managed to defeat one of my points if it were stated in a universal sense by proving that some people do choose to take less work for less money. Well done, you've managed to disprove something I never said. Most people will already be at a consumer surplus maximising point and they'll not desire to move from it until the situation changes. Beer prices go down, or something like that.


Easier is better. How can one say that putting in less effort for the same result is worse? Only people who have some overriding desire for the world to be remade in their vision can say people are wrong for maximising their own enjoyment of life.

The lack of alternatives are something I see as an end result of companies attempting to maximise profits by putting all resources to maximum usage. The fact that this usage is not any of the alternatives indicates that the alternatives are inefficient except as a luxury for those who want to have a particular kind of lifestyle and can afford to live less efficiently for that lifestyle.


Is it possible for you to consider that man is not naturally a high minded, high brow intellectual at his core? That you are the exception rather than the rule? Most people do not appreciate Stravinskiy, most do not want to read Bertrand Russel's "Satan in the suburbs". When you turn on the TV and see the Simpsons, that is what most people in the world are like. Seth Green's characters are close to the same level of representation, just a lot more informed and current. Entertainment imitates life. Smart people often forget that not everyone is the same as them.

Nobody makes them want beer and pizza and TV - they want them because it makes their lives better. These things are intrinsically valuable to them. Maybe not to you, but to them it is - differences are the spice of life. Corps provide these things because there is a demand, because they can make money off their provision.

I play computer games even in the absence of stressors. Equally, most people will watch a lot of TV and eat a pizza with beer even when not stressed. Very few go out to improve themselves without a need to do so, and those that do find it inherently enjoyable.


The concept of a post-scarcity economy is predicated on the existance of a universally available, extremely portable, rapidly acting, and cost-effective means of universal production. Somehow I doubt this is practically possible. Post-scarcity economies are myths that forward thinkers have come up with in a vacuum of criticism. Shadowrun technology does not provide for a post-scarcity economy be any means, mostly due to the limits that the "amazing" new technologies have as a part of their basic nature.

A post-scarcity economy still does not preclude the fact that comparitive advantage exists; trading with other specialists is still more efficient than producing for yourself in all cases. I expect that most universal assembler technologies will not be as efficient as a good automated assembly line or else can be improved by a specialised design that will enable comparitive advantage to continue to exist. Trade continues and people have reason to interact, and a reason to continue to work beyond their own needs to maximise what they can get in trade for their produce.


The things that those people produce aren't worth much to them, they probably already have enough or don't need any. They'd be willing to sell them for as much as they're getting paid. The fact that those things are worth more to the people who have the links to dealers doesn't matter because they don't have objective worth - it's good for the workers that they don't have to keep hold of something they don't need and good for the person who can sell them on. Mutually beneficial (ie voluntary, because you wouldn't choose anything that you think is beneficial to yourself) transactions are the cornerstone of free markets.

For every additional product variety that exists the degree to which people can tailor their experience of the world for maximum personal comfort and enjoyment increases. For the rich this is a minor effect and for the poorer this is a minor effect multiplied by a ridiculously large number which makes it significantly in their favour to court additional products, the monetary profit for the rich is the incentive and payoff for making the world a better place. Are the rich that less deserving of a good time (which money can be used to purchase) than the poorer?

Rather, that paragraph should be that the availability of a new good is far more beneficial to others than oneself, and the profits from producing and supplying the good are the incentive and payoff for making the world a better place for everyone. Rich people can invest in making the world a better place more easily than the poorer, but the corporation is the big equaliser because it enables a lot of poorer people to invest in providing goods and services for all.


Rampant unrestrained production is pointless. If you create when nobody wants it you have wasted resources for no benefit - the world in general is poorer for your choice. Maximising the number of goods produced is not the optimal strategy for assigning resources.

Drones cannot do everything that a metahuman can, simply because metahumans are carefully constructed and designed to provide the maximum flexibility in their actions at the minimum of cost. Every point of articulation on a drone is an expense both in construction and maintenance, whereas metahumans come with large numbers of these at almost no cost.

No matter how much you can live without others, who would want to? Comparitive advantage does not cease to exist simply because you've decided that you hate people, and you'll live a shittier life because you're not trading. Those who've become insular are always worse off than those willing to trade. If you're willing to live a worse life because people are a pain then you've made a particular choice, but you're still trading inefficiency for the lack of interaction.


Consumerism is the idea that people like to consume material goods. This does not mean that they consume everything equally, mind, just that they consume and enjoy consuming. If people liked to consume without preference or limit then production-centric economies would maximise enjoyment and that would make people choose them over alternatives. Consumerism is not actually an economic system, it's just an assumption. I'd caution you guys to choose your terms carefully in future.

I believe you mean demand-side (or Keynesian) economics, as opposed to supply-side economics. This debate is still up the fucking air, I believe, and probably highly dependant on the current situation. I thought you were a marxist, with your talk of revolution and so on, why do you care about economics - isn't it the tool of the evil capitalists who oppose the workers' struggle to take control of the means of production and produce themselves into poverty?

I assume that people in SR are pretty much the same as in the real world, that the malice is the result of the cause being isolated from the effects and breakdown of law and order. Disasters make people eat each other, and the sixth world has had quite a number of these, hitting almost every major city on the planet.

(Wall of text specialisation comes in handy once more!)