Earlier I was reading From Russia With Love and as it went on about the USSR I suddenly thought "It's like Aztechnology with snow." and it made me wonder, what are the ultimate goals of the tripple A's?

The soviets wanted world dommination and set out to undermine their enemies. What do the AAA's want? We know they do not want open world control, let the governments handle the pesky paperwork but what do they want? Just a profit line? Destruction of their enemies? AZT seems to want dominion of it's region but does it want to expand? Does it care what Cross does in quebec? Does it seek to see Cross fall because it wants Qubec too or because it fears Cross will move into Mexico? or do they just want happy consumers to buy their products?

Is Ares Macrotechnologies really a 'good guy' corp as it projects? Does it seek to rebuild American power or does it like the UCAS weak so it must rely on the home grown corp?

Does Wuxing really care about a pac rim alliance or is it a useful shield against other corps? Does it really want to dismantle its other member states more than it wants to face off competion? and so forth.

If just out for profit, why have the high level of violent spying? What else is their goal? Something more than the bottom line. I mean something gets to AAA status it's not going to go away (Fuchi doesn't count) it can't be taken so why does it try to chop up other AAA's? or are they just trapped in not knowing what else to do but keep rolling on? what 's going on?

The AAA's want what every other business wants: money, prestige, and power.

And the best way to get it is to become an international business and eliminate all competition.

Snow Fox, that's a pretty excellent question.

If it is power they want, by the time they hit AAA, they have it. Same with wealth and (relative) security.

My general take on most of the AAA's is that, as entities, they want to, even have to, expand to survive. Mainly because the people who run them, at every level, believe, quite rightly, that the world is out to get them, and that as a consequence, the only way to secure their own futures, and that of whatever little chunk of corporate power they control, is to get more and more of what they already have.

A AAA corporation, in general, can do almost anything it wants to, so long as they don't run afoul of each other directly, or make enough of a public mess that the Corporate Council has to take notice and action.

So basically they keep expanding, pushed by this need for more, more, more, till they run up against a barrier. That barrier might be another corp, a dragon, some government with enough vestigial ability left to check them, or whatever. After that their desire becomes quite simply to find a way around, over, or through whatever is stopping their expansion.

Which is why the AAAs rarely have absolutely stable relationships, are always scheming and chewing at each other, and every other scrap of advantage, profit and power that comes on offer, etc, etc.

Also why Shadowrunners have jobs, often times.

As always, YMMV

Carny

A megacorp is still a corp; it doesn't somehow transcend its fundamental nature as a publically traded entity. The triple-A class corps still seek profit, they have an obligation to provide value (ie profits) to their shareholders, they expand to better fulfil this obligation and they attempt to gut or out-manoeuvre each other to steal sales enough to make a major impact.

They only care about making money because the board that elects the CEO is comprised of shareholders that have some interest in an increase in profits.

The corporate power structure, and the economic model it functions under, requires constant growth to survive. But they've long ago reached the point where there are few new places to expand to. So instead they merge and eliminate competition and otherwise cannibalize the rest of the economy. The goal of a Megacorp is to make more and more of the economy part of them each year, even if it means lowering the overall economy. It's not power and greed for it's own sake, it's power and greed because to not do so means to perish. Mostly the Megas just want to survive. Eventually, there will simply be no place to expand anymore, and the system built on expansion will either have to fall or change. The corps want to push that off as long as possible.

Other than that, they pursue the personal goals of their shareholders and CEOs.

I'll let The Flying Lizards answer that question.

Yeah, it really is as simple as that. It doesn't matter how much you have. There is no such thing as enough and it is certainly impossible to have too much. It is always possible to have more money, even if you have to build space colonies for the sole purpose of creating new markets and new resources for yourself.

I'll let John, Paul, George, Ringo, and many screaming teenage girls reiterate.

It makes the world go round.

Arguably, this does not preclude an agenda outside of profit - although such an agenda lives and dies with the CEO and/or the board of directors.

It seems unlikely the whole of Coca Cola would be concerned with a vast conspiracy. The average wageslave at any level, and we are all wageslaves on one scale or another, rarely shifts beyond drawing a paycheck and how to spend the weekend.

-Siege

The firstmost motivation of any corporation is profit, pure and simple. Profit can be obtained in two ways, growth or increased market share (which is a type of growth) so every corp will expand to reach those. If the CEO (or the people around him) have any brains they look for ways to accomplish both. I work for an oil company that is looking into alternative energy (even has a subsidiary that only does alternative stuff). Is it for the common good? While individuals may work in the division for that reason the oil company recognizes that if it can corner the next big energy source they are that much farther ahead of the competition.

The other thing to keep in mind is that most large corporations work more like a distributed network. There really is no one completely in charge (sorry CEO wannabes) and so the corp takes on a life of its own.

Verbose, but I suppose the tl;dr crowd will ignore this thread entirely.

Let's say that you have A and B. The provider and the consumer.

The most surefire way to power and control in any given situation is for A, the provider, the shape B's, the consumer's very wishes and desires through skillful manipulation in a way that either B knows about and accepts or does not realize because it has always been such a way. Thusly, A sculpts B's desires in such a way that they will not only know their role but actively seek it out.

The corp creates a new product that is so marvelous and new that everyone must have it whether they know it or not. Is it useful? Is it shiny? Does it last forever? Doesn't matter. The consumer needs it and the bright boys working for the corp must figure out a way to make sure that they know they need it and then seek it out much in the way that things are sold today whether we need them or not. We need bread, but we don't need a certain type of bread. Brands names for example are a way of selling a certain type of brand. Before it was just bread. Now it is Wonderbread. And consumer loyalty is built and Wonderbread beats competitors out because people know what they're getting with Wonderbread.

Corps want control, but at the same time they don't want to take responsibility for that control. Corps don't wish to fight wars, pass laws (the ones they don't care about anyway), feed the poor, shelter the homeless, etc that governments often pick up the slack on. They want to sell a product or service. And they want to do so in an environment that actively discourages anything but the status quo because the status quo is good for business. And they wish to expand their markets and thusly expand their profits by gaining new markets in new places. Out of new markets? Create some or cannibalize your competitors which clash with your world view.

Basically, corps want to be something necessary. They want to be something like air. You don't think about it, you're always using it. Why am I breathing air? I can't survive without air, I need it regularly or I would surely perish. Air has no competitors. It is the perfect product. I love the way it sustains me so I may partake in other things that I need, like water. Boy do I sure like seeing and hearing things. Eating and drinking too.

So you see, a corp wants domination, but not. Most of the benefits with fewer drawbacks. Leave that to the chumps who run the governments.

...Hyz, I'll second the second link (saw the four lads back in '64). that's what it's all about...

...however, according to Kaufman & Hart..."you can't take it with you" So spend it all now!

The corps don't really want to get more money. They print the money. The money is just an abstraction, and always has been. Electronic numbers, pieces of paper, even gold have no real value. They are just set as part of the social contract as things that people will exchange for goods and services. And those do have real value because they take real resources to produce.

The corps ultimately want to control things. They want to control resources, they want to control territory, they want to control people, they want to control discourse. They don't honestly care about putting their flag on things (except Shiawase and Ares, who actually do), only about controlling things. They want to be the ones who sell you your commlink, because then they control your commlink. They want to be the ones who sell you your food because then they control your food.

The megacorps have established an international currency as a means of keeping score. Who controls the nuyen, controls the wealth, controls the world. All of the big guys will continue expanding until they are destroyed or take over the entire planet. Once they've done that, they'll run the world as a panned economy with very rich and powerful shady dudes running everything. So basically it's exactly like the Soviet Union except that they don't even bother pretending to have the interests of the little guy at heart.

-Frank

Increase shareholder value... (note not stakeholder value)...

I can’t believe it! I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Frank Trollman, not a smidgeon of disagreement anywhere!

Damn, I need to go and check my temperature.

To the OP, since the cynical historian in me can’t let this go unasked:
Anyway, do you mean the USSR as it was portrayed in propagandistic Hollywood and James Bond movies or the real-world thing?

In RL they were no after world domination, and there were several internal fights in the ruling party about just that. On just about every significant occasion the isolationists came out on top

Cold war entertainment was another matter entirely, though. Why let the facts stand in your way when you have such a great badguy on your dorrstep?

Western 'propaganda' is indeed a nice way to put it. It appears that during the cold war era the USSR had more troops stationed at their China border than in Europe... It appears they where scared shitless for the Chinese at the time.

Frank's assessment is very accurate. Profit is important to the public corporations, because they have shareholders to placate, but yeah, since the megacorps print the nuyen, it really does become more like scorekeeping.

Then you have corporations like Aztechnology, which are private and don't have shareholders to answer to. To those who have looked past Aztechnology's PR, the desire for control is quite clear.

Corps want to grow slightly (growth strategies are out if you are that large), and keep everything they ever gained, if it can make profits in some forseeable future. Individual business units might be more aggressive, and some corps might lack the internal organisation (intentionally) to stop internal competition.

Ares for example will behave like the US military complex does today - they produce weapons, military advisors, combat vehicles... anyone who does that wants war, or at least a threat of war. So their entertainment rating likely includes a few propaganda institutions. The long-term strategy is "stay on top".

Aztechnology is slightly different, because it is quite willing to wage war itself. It has the interests of an owned nation-state to expand, which is even better than extraterritoriality. SK and MCT are ressource-driven corporations, they need to secure exploitation rights to survive. Local politics be damned, control is indeed king.

First and foremost, power. Increase Shareholder Value, and the power of the marketplace. That is the very lifesblood of a Corporation.

Secondly, it depends on the Corporation, each one has it's own culture and values.

Shiawase, Mitsuhama and Renraku are fully behind a revitalized Japanese Empire because that's part of their culture, despite being their own "Countries". This could also mainly due to the fact that an expanded Japanese Empire means more resources and market for them.

Evo is heavily into the Transhumanism and Equal Rights for Metahumans and Non-Metahumans, mainly due to the board make-up (Buttercup is a fraggin' FREE SPIRIT after all!).

Ares, who knows. They seem to be all "America and Apple Pie" that applies to both the UCAS and CAS, but there's so much going on there...

Horizon is the new guys on the block, and is such a chaotic mess that we're unable to see what they want. Possibly just have a good time and do what they love doing while making a drekpot of money. (What? Only poor, hobbyists are supposed to love what they do for a living?). Media control is a possibility, however, on the concept that if you control their minds, you control their souls.

NeoNET wants to buy the Yankees and the Cubs and get them to win the World Series. (Personally, I'm surprised they haven't done this yet.).

Wuxing I'm not so sure on.

Saeder-Krupp... Hell, you ask Lofwyr!

Aztechnology, Aztechnology, Aztechnology. Despite it's popualirty with the Sheeple, this Corporation, rightly, has a bad, bad, BAD reputation in the Shadows that it has rightly earned. Power of a different sort is what they appear to be after. Perhaps Power that you can take with you!

That's just my ideas.

"Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form."

Corporations are a life form by their own right, and in fact go through all the processes we generally attribute to life. What does life want? To adapt to its environment, to collect natural resources in order to grow, to control its territory, to reproduce. And this is what the corporations do. It's a fallacy to consider it a human-controlled organization any more. While it is in fact controlled by humans, it has grown too large for us to manage or understand. Each person, from CEO to mail clerk, can only understand a small aspect of the whole beast, can only try to manage that small aspect, like a single ant in the line, they all push towards the corporations growth (or are excreted as failed cells). It isn't even that corporate bigwigs are bad people. Aztechnology has very many good people in it. But the course of the sum total of human decisions has set the corporation on a course it can't be easily pulled from, and now even the CEO can only gently prod it in one direction or another, and never seeing the whole picture or fully understanding either the ramifications of his actions or the natural defenses the corporation will bring to bear back against him. To say a corporation is human-run is to say that people are cell-run. It's technically true, but ultimately a failed paradigm.

The answer is easy and scary at the same time: There is no corporate goal. People have goals.

Damien Knight has goals, Lofwyr has goals... but corporate entities as a whole, lose any goals they might have declared quickly. And the AAA's are way past that point. Out of themselves, corporations are just growing and consuming without any purpose.

...Molochs of never ending productivity, a herd of giant animals - all alike and collectively pushing around all the smaller ones - competing for the hunting grounds, rarely in direct competition for a clash between two of those giants would shake the world.
Yet if one struggles, they all gather and cannibalize the body before it recognizes it's mistake.

Tune in next week where we will discuss the rise an fall of Fuchi, here on NatGeo5 - your favorite source of independent information.
[display Horizon ad here]

You honestly believe that life yesterday (or the day before, or befor that - you get what I mean) was the best life could possibly be and the things we have today are pointless and we only buy them because our corporate overseers make us want them? That's scary in and of itself.


Currency has always been a way of keeping score. The important thing is what it is keeping score of. From the perspective of an economist, transfers of currency are effectively saying "I like what you're doing, do more of it" and that means that corporations looking for higher profits involves providing goods and services that benefit (or satisfy) consumers as much as possible.

Yes and no. What I said was the most effective and subtle path to control. I don't believe I ever mentioned that life will always be descending into something worse. Just because A can shape B's thoughts and desires and make them seek out their designated place within society there is still a conflicting message from many of the corps. Furthermore, there will always be a counterculture which is fueled by relative deprivation (the problem of the poor seeing the rich and wanting what they can't have) and in the case of Seattle, a sense of good old fashioned American unruliness which never disappeared from the scene. Sure, a lot of people can buy into that corporate lifestyle. 2.4 kids, two cars, a nice corporate job, etc, but not everyone can have it. So people rebel because it really is something that you have to buy into. And without that cred you're not a part of that culture.

Though it is important to remember that the world standard currency is controlled by the ZOG Bank, an organization owned by the Big Ten megacorporations. And that distribution of that wealth down to the consumer level is often distinctly and intentionally unfair (corp scrip, for example).

This is more what I was thinking, they seem caught in their own logic, growing because they don't know what else to do but they've reached a level that they are in new territory.
I mean AZT is Mexico. Cross is going to be supprted by Quebec. MTC, Renraku and Shiawase will be carried by Japan. but is their expansion truly necessary? They are in a situation like the european powers were in the 1700's a belief there was only a limited market and the only thing to do is destroy the competition instead of finding new markets.

What happens if someoen discovers that new market?

Real world protrayal. I mentioned I was reading. Flemming's books are no where near as over the top as the movies and considering his profession before becoming a writer I give it a lot of weight.

Spy novels profit from portraying evil (like SR does), and his personal experiences are based on wartime secret service games against russia. Getting better sales was also likely more important than portraying Russia (as he knew it).

Ever read the books?
Seriously. FRwL has the unprecedented forward by Flemming detailnig that the stuff he sets down about the soviet secret service is correct and accurate.

The books really seem a good idea of what was happening.Property of a Lady talks about how soviet agents in Britain was paid off. Live and Let Die was smuggling to finance soviet agents in America.ETC

I didn´t - otherwise I would have said that.

I´m not contesting the quality of his information on the soviet secret service. It´s the world-domination part were I have issues. Stalin was a proponent of "socialism in one country", and quite a few Russian activities - in war and afterwards - can be explained as reactions to international politics.

Can A shape B's thoughts and desires? Really, can you think of any way that a corp can shape people's wants? It's far more cost effective for a corp to fulfill the desires of the population and make known the fact that they can do so. This is not shaping anyone, it's satisfying them.

You are saying that we had all we needed yesterday and that what we are getting today is worthless junk that we're being made to want through some unknown means. To explain, your claim that corps go out and invest in mass mind manipulation means that it is necessary to sell their products, implying that you think that what we are getting is worthless. The assumption that what we are getting is worthless leads to the asusmption that we achieved everything of worth in the past and now we are churning endlessly with no improvements, just more manipulation and pointless growth.

Counterculture is simply the result of being told that you are a unique and special snowflake, rebellion against the dominant culture suffused in self-righteousness. It's not wrong to be a member of counterculture, though, people need to be free to choose. I just hate the amount of self-gratifying bullshit thrown around by the counterculture, believing themselves superior to everyone because they're rejecting the habits of the masses, en masse.


Every piece of corp scrip you own entitles you to some of that corps wealth. If they refuse to honour that entitlement to its full value then you can refuse to work for them. Part of the wealth of the corp is invested in its capacity to provide security to you and your family, which they provide automatically for their employees and the price of this is factored into the pay differential between working for a mega and working an equivalent position in a corp that does not provide these benefits. Other ways the corp pays its employees include their work environment, the educational oppurtunities it gives their children, the people that the corp attracts and many other details. People choose the package because the summation of the value of its components are more valuable to them than the pay difference.

The assumption that corps are all evil, conniving gits that somehow manage to trick their employees into working for them when much better options exist destroys any verisimilitude the setting has. I refuse to accept such a setting and would immediately and subconsciously rewrite such a setting into something that makes sense.

like invading Hungary? Seriously I know it can be 'justified' the Berlin wall was to keep out corruption-but in fact it was to prevent defection but that was exactly the sort of thing I was considering. AZT is seen as the most ruthless of the AAA's, probably by virtue of their embracing blood magic. They can justify what they do as relation to the rest of the world, so where are they going?

Sorry, Frank, but although I can understand that you put a lot of thought into what you said, what you just said seems to be extremely simple and obvious at it's core (big business wants to control things). What's the point of being rich if you can't gain power and prestige?

Honestly, I live in the Czech Republic. The Soviet invasions here had purpose, often to prevent defections from within the empire as much as to accomplish any particular world conquest goals. The crushing of Prague Spring was not about expanding the Soviet territory, it was about showing people in the Soviet Empire that refusing orders from the central committee was not allowed. Like how the US sent troops to Chile or El Salvador when they decided to have free elections.

The myth that the US was good and shiny while the Soviets were evil and soul crushing is good for propaganda, but honestly the US didn't universally have the moral high ground at any point. Both empires are kind of dicks. History books tell happy stories of the American cold war victory because they are written by the winners. For every Soviet Gulag you can name an American support for UNITA. It's really a very dark in world history and there are no good guys.



What does that have to do with anything?

Being "rich" is meaningless. It's just a number. Power and Prestige are the currencies of the Earth. Hell, the United States lost a bunch of power and prestige over its failed war and financial fiascos over the last few years and the Dollar lost a third of its value. Literally a third of the wealth of the United States simply ceased to be. In a year. You could make 50% more money and you'd still be losing ground if you lost the prestige.

While the corporations of the world pretend to trade back and forth in Nuyen, they are actually amassing power and control. Because that's the real currency that makes their Nuyen "worth" anything.

-Frank

OK I'll shoot. Ford bought tons of public transportation infrastructure and tore it out to create demand. Microsoft uses it's clout to forcibly maintain global conditions where it's inferior operating system is the best choice in the context of the real world. The reason corps use these tactics is because it can be far more cost effective to increase demand for an existing product by influencing the market rather one improving a product would show marginal gain. It's almost always cheaper to influance the market rather than enter a whole new one as well. These kinds of maneuvers are never an opening strategy. Ford couldn't have gotten people using unicycles by taking out rail cars. Windows is fully capable of running enterprise class solutions, etc. That said once you have a SOTA product, manipulating the market is usually a better buy.


Please try harder than a black and white read. Both factors are at work. Cars work just fine. The car industry invest heavily in make sure people want this years cars. Both so they can sell more cars, and so they can don't have to make cars to last. Very cost effective. There are billions of dollars worth of injection molded drek stamped out in china no one needs, and would not have a market if it wasn't for advertising. It cost MacDonal's basically nothing but the license to put Yu-Gi-Oh crap in there happy meals, which will make them sell more; real product ("food") + worthless crap = money.


Eh, I place value on conscious critical choice. Not every in a counter culture has done that; not everyone in the dominate culture is a drone. You will see a higher consintrations of drones any dominate culture by definition. But seriously people need to knock off the wholly-than-tho attitude, especially if the culture has evangelical aspirations.


yup


You are right in that people will on average take the best employment they can find. The thing is no trick involved. The world really does suck that much that corps can get away with treating people like that because it is still there best option.
On a side note I believe the best and only real protection for minimum wage is the quality of life the wageless. You can't pay people less than what farm forage and hunt. You can't bandy this into a pretty powerful pro gun argument against very liberal people.

I think Aztlan as representative of Aztechnology is way more aggressive than Russia was at that time. If we count their investment into local consumer markets, in combination with the troop concentration on their northern border, they are clearly going to be a major player in the north american theater. War efforts are severely hampered if your population suffers "war-induced" price hikes and shortages, and your troops are outnumbered to boot.

A certain dragon has old europe in its golden paws. That one might well go for world domination in the long run, but stability and control is even more to him than any of the traditional zaibatsus. The new european restauration is done for the same reasons as the old ERP.

In terms of evil, Horizon is my clear winner. Employees suffer from a total loss of control over their personal network, constant supervision and evaluation, and steady viral marketing. You cease to be if you fail in the eyes of the corp. And the corp is young. Considers what happens if they grow, as consequence of that culture? Insect hosts will at least not feel the pain.

You are familiar with Marketing, aren't you? The profession that exists for the exact purpose of manipulating people's desires into a need for a specific product? It's all about shaping the thoughts and desires of the consumer, and thats not counterculture ranting or leftist propaganda, that is the Self-admitted goal of the people in the field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Edward Bernays, father of modern public relations, nephew of Freud, made his career by using the psychology techniques of the day to convince people they needed the products or services of the company. He believed that in a democracy, the public mind HAD to be manipulated, otherwise anarchy would ensue. His greatest success was in overthrowing the government of guatemala on behalf of united fruit company.

There's a modern marketer who's name I can't recall enough to find on google. He's most famous for working with Plymouth cars on that hot-rod looking thing around the millenium. He would constantly say "the reptile brain always wins", meanting that no amount of logical thinking about how to best meet your desires could overcome adverts that told you a product would make you richer, stronger or sexier. I hope someone else with better seacrh-fu will find his name.

Companies use the strongest mind-manipulation techniques available to control consumers. That's not conspiracy, that's open, stated fact. Ask anyone in marketing. They don't need to hide it, because it works.

I'm interested as to why you think that Microsoft products are inferior; Mac fanboy, or Linux/Unix fanboy? Macs are cool, except for the stupid arrogance of its users and their inability to handle a second mouse button, not to mention the seething hypocrisy of Apple. Oh, and it doesn't "just work" as well as Plan 9. I want an Air so I can install Zenwalk on it. Linux/Unix is alright, but I don't want to bother reading 20 man pages before I understand how to turn on my wireless connection.

Windows is actually rather good, quite user friendly most of the time (which was sort of its purpose). Most people, contrary to popular opinion, do not care all that much about what the experts call "indicators of quality", only experts care about those.

Okay, so that was kind of a dick move on Ford's part. There are reasons most countries have legislation that allows people to sue for being an asshole monopoly. I partially concede, one can eliminate one's competitors to manipulate the amount of choice in the market.


That "worthless crap" is a value adder. Some people like those pieces of worthless crap! I like some pieces of worthless crap! Seriously, something small may tip the value of the happy meal from not worth it to barely worth it. It's not worthless crap if someone wants it, anyway, all prices are measures of how much most people would pay to be in possession of the item in question.

It's surprising how many people believe that things should be priced at some some relatively fixed multiplier of the current price of the materials that went into making the item. Totally bizarre, that. Especially given that most of them wouldn't rant about the evil or pointlessness of auctioneers.



Marketing, I believe, generally forms associations more than performing full blown mind control.

A man once bought shares in Grolsch because a lot of beer mats in a city hosting a major shareholder's meeting bore their name, he didn't think that it meant Grolsch was going to do well - he just through that a lot of other people would think that and would also buy shares. If people think that other people are going to think something looks cool and they like looking cool, even if that image is all manufactured by advertising, that's still a rationally evaluated benefit from purchasing the item. Image is a product as valuable to those who buy it as taste is to those who eat for pleasure. Someone goes to the trouble of creating an image so that people can buy that image. Image is actually an industry with a fast product turnover.

You can think people are idiots, but remember that you're just as stupid next time you feel good for dressing well or enjoying a fine meal.

So your world view remains consistent by assuming that the illusion is as valuable as the real thing. The problem is that consumers are not rational decision makers. They never have been and they never will be. It's not that I think people are idiots. It's that I think marketers are evil, and are hijacking the way the brain works for their own ends.

Bad computer metaphor: A dll injector is a piece of code that intercepts messages sent to a specific dll and either copies or redirects it. They have many legitimate uses, but are also very valuable for malware. So when the computer is trying to perform a normal operation, instead it gets redirected to run your code instead.

Point is, the advertising gets in there and redirects your perfectly natural urge to find a mate or security and instead directs it to purchasing products. And while there may be legitimate uses for such programming (subverting the natural urge to fight into other forms of competition, perhaps), it is mostly valuable for convincing people to do things to their detriment.

I don't think you can blame the consumer for purchasing based on that image. Thats how human beings think. Maybe after a few more generations of exposure we'll have built up a tolerance (this may already be happening), much like a virus. But really, the moral responsibility lies in not misusing the knowledge of how the mind works.

And you can rationalize it all as being OK or even how things should work, but you are still just as much a victim of it everytime you choose image over reality.

And that was precisely when?

Illusion is as valuable as the real thing because consumers are not rational decision makers. In effect, all those adds about the cool new mercury comet are advertisings for your social status because your neighbors know that you own the car. One part of marketing is product information (the percentage depends on the country), and therefore not all marketing is evil. Even if some forms of image enhancements are IMO crossing the line even today. It is a superficial world if you like to pay for status symbols, but there is a rational value associated with that.

But where is the loss of value to the customer? Rational utility functions allow you to conclude that he would have been better off with a car and some money than just a car. But the customer will likely never learn, because all customers are gauged equally, and perceive a higher value of said car.

The marketeers are worse on the internal side. They specify the life expectancy of the corps products, because making a product last forever is often possible, with modern tech even easy, but costs too much future profits.

Nothing. Just my opinion, and nothing more. Try not to look too deeply into the words of a poster named "sweaty hippo."

Oh, and I have to disagree with being rich is meaningless. Ever seen American celebrities and the legions of fanatic followers? All said celebrities ever did is amass a big pile of cash, and look at the hordes of goggle-eyed goons screaming on TV when Paris Hilton steps out of a limo.

If you ever wanted an army of "sheeple," being a rich celebrity is the way to go.

A little refresher, my contention with your position is that yo said controlling people isn't worth the money. It is. As evidance I point to Disney, Microsoft, and Ford doing this and assume that they act profitably because they are really big.


I'm not a rabid Microsoft hater. I didn't say all MS products are bad I even mentioned they have some of the best enterprise solutions out there. Vista is a POS SO though. Microsoft itself copped to this as much as a cooperation can afford to. My point is that they use tactics other producing quality product that meets real need to make sales. You claimed earlier that it is not profitable to do anything but meet existing needs.


Yes, people do loves them worthless crap, and will pay for it giving it a real exchange value. Here is the thing kids like toys. So Disney creates a specific desire with a move so it can get away with selling its physical wares for a much larger mark up. They created desire for the express purpose of sell stuff meet that new need.

Microsoft has also been forced by market forces to slow their normal transition plan until Vista stops sucking. However, their sales model that relies on provision as standard on most new computers is satisfying a need; a computer is not all that useful without an OS, OSes and computers are extremely complementary. We should expect them to be sold together, it's of benefit to the consumer that way since they don't have to expend time and effort searching for a compatible OS. You can claim that it's unfair, but it does serve the consumer.


Yes, but people enjoy it and merchandising simply expands the degree to which people enjoy a property. It's not like Disney force you to want a particular media property, they simply try to maximise the degree to which you enjoy their products (and therefore purchase complementary materials). This is beneficial for both you and Disney. You enjoy life more for experiencing their products and they get your money (but less money than the aggregate of all the experiences worth to you), mutually beneficial exchanges since you both want what the other has more than they want it. Movies don't create a desire to own a likeness of a particular character; they simply introduce the design to you and associate some basic character traits with the design, and being seen to appreciate a Disney character with certain characterisation may be a product that you'd like to purchase just as much as a peculiar and unlikely arrangement of organic molecules (food!).

The products sold can be much more ephemeral and subjective than you might think.


The requirements for being a rational decision maker are rather low. I'm no expert (I sucked at macroeconomics in my first year, but I was always going to be a CompSci student), but rationality is pretty much being able to order your preferences between choices in a non-circular manner. You must be able to attribute relative worth to the choices facing them.

The illusion for yourself is not necessarily what I'm talking about here, the illusions of others may make it worthwhile to purchase a product that does not rate highly in other aspects; skateboarding shoes are cool with certain crowds, so buying skateboarding shoes is good if you want to attract people from that crowd. Is this bad or stupid? For you to decide, I would have agreed with you some time ago but my opinions have changed in the past few years.

A product associated with being successful with women may be valuable if the advertising also manages to persuade women that people using it are good lovers. The product may be completely superfluous to achieving this goal physically, but the fact that it helps attract lovers makes it valuable because of illusions inspired by marketing. Marketers make people believe in illusions, but if those illusions are quite universally shared they're not necessarily bad. Giving people the oppurtunity to express their desire to seek mates and the strength of their desire is not a fundamentally bad thing, right?

Nobody engineered the association between suits and success, but people now buy suits to look successful. Is it an evil of the world that suits and ties are universally considered to look good and be signs of success? Why should we object to marketers creating new universal associations for us to use and taking, as payment for the new tool they've given us for social interaction, profits from sales over some competing image-related product.

That would be Project FUBELT in 1973 for five hundred dollars.

-Frank

Digressing on FUBELT: the Wikipedia article does not specify the US sending uniformed armed forces to Chile. So on one hand Frank's overall point is clear that the USA's respect for Chilean autonomy is roughly parallel to USSR's respect for Czech autonomy. On another hand, the more specific statement that the USA sent troops seems debatable. <shrug> I'll leave that question for another forum... one could argue that there's a moral difference, or one could call it just a style choice of how to maintain one's empire.

A corp can have overall goals, and indeed most probably have a Mission Statement written by a committee, which mentions shareholder revenue along with making the world a better place by providing goods and services. Saeder-Krupp has a single main player, and so what the dragon wants is pretty much what the corp wants, but the difference between the motives of, say, Lofwyr, and what the head of S-K R&D, and Mr. Johnson (hired by assistant to head of R&D)... the friction between those motives can be the source of a good story. They all want S-K to have the best, shiniest new tech, but it's quite plausible that Lofwyr is working on a timetable with deferred gratification over multiple human generations, and maybe the assistant happens to want to set up the head for an embarrassing failure and then suddenly show up with a pre-planned rescue (in hopes of getting the head fired and taking the head's place), and meanwhile, Mr. Johnson is mostly hoping to make enough off the deal that he can pay off some debts, which is why he's also cutting a side deal with the Vory...

With any other corp, the constellation of individuals with variously well-aligned or mis-aligned motives, is even more complex, from top to bottom.

The association between a corp and a national government (or two) varies interestingly. Aztech and Aztlan are closely intertwined, with nahuallis to complete the triangle of government, business and religion; presumably there are bloody internal politics; if UCAS and CAS were willing and able to invade and conquer all the way to the Panama Canal, Aztech would lose a lot of its power base. The Japanese corps may have received preferential treatment in expanding their San Francisco operations, during the time that JIS marines were "restoring order" in San Francisco. Which corps, if any, don't have a significant national affiliation, and could relocate at will?

Define "relocation". The broad investments of a true mega make the location of ones HQ a secondary concern. Evo still has loads of assets in Japan. Horizon could move its HQ gracefully, because the workforce would OF COURSE be happy to comply, and physical assets are low anyway.

If two nations go to war, a true mega is usually sitting on both sides of the border. Should put a stop to WW2s city annihilation tactics. You shall not harm the bottom line, so war is a national issue that ends up in corporate politics.

EVO, NeoNET, Horizon.

-Frank

Right, because without marketers people would have NO WAY to express their desire for a mate.

I think that anyone who beleives in a right to self-determination would object to having someone create an association in your mind. Especially an association that causes you to behave in a wya that benifits them. Associating basic needs with their products. Especially when the associated product does does nothing to meet the need, or even makes the need worse (hummers were sold as "safe" vehicles, were infact horribly unsafe. Carbonated beverages do not releive thirst, they make it worse.) Especially because they are specifically crafted to prevent you from ever fufilling the desires they hijacked, because if you were fufilled you'd stop buying.

Associations themselves aren't bad, just like in my terrible metaphor dll injectors aren't bad. There are bad ways to use both, however. My point is and remains that corporations DO have the tools, in the real world as well as in SR, to shape public beleif and outright create desire for their products wholecloth. That was the origional question (in what way can a corporation make someone want their product), and regardless of if you think marketing is good, bad or indifferent, I think the point is proven.

Not as many, and with nowhere near as many gradiations and nuances. The extra resolution is worth it, in my humble opinion.


I'd say it's pretty difficult to object to all the cases of someone creating an association in your mind with the expectation of benefits; you'd have to begrudge your parents, society, and a huge number of people otherwise. Parents get benefits from making you believe that lying is fundamentally wrong, or making you associate taking other peoples' things with some negative feeling. Objecting to a corp making you and others associate a particular brand of aftershave with attracting hot women, on the stated grounds that inducing associations in your mind to their advantage is evil, when your parents instill guilt associations in your mind from an early age (or should've, if they'd not) is not exactly an exemplar of intellectual integrity.

Now, if what you mean is "I object to certain people, who I have a stated disrespect for, creating associations in my mind", then you should state it out loud instead of arguing a more universal position. I am a tolerant person, I can accept mercenary ethics that allow you to forgive the evil perpetrated to you by your parents because that evil had good outcomes, or merely addictive ones. A definition of evil based on your reaction to marketers creating associations in your mind, by the way, nothing to do with my definitions of evil.

People are creating associations in your mind every day; an offhand comment from a source you trust about, say, corps raping the land or stealing your money with useless products will make you associate corps with bad things. That the comment originates from someone who has an objective in mind and expects to benefit from the increased public sentiment against corporations would make it evil, yet I'm pretty sure you want to say that it's not an evil thing to do because of it's agreement with your sentiments.


Lies are something I do object to, and advertising standards need to be enforced frequently and strongly enough that it is a significant disincentive. Still, factually true statements in advertising that are misleading are a problem that requires a lot more analysis, thought, and expertise than I can bring to bear on the subject. I'll admit that I can't commit myself to a position on everything about truth when I still have doubts and inquiries.


They're really selling a different (and more attractive) product that just happens to look remarkably similar to an old product, but I'm assuming you're going to claim that's bullshit. You seem to be a materialist kind of guy, based on the statement that bits of shaped plastic shouldn't be worth so much.

You win in your opinion, in my opinion you're wrong. Let's agree to disagree, I've gotten a lot out of this discussion but it's probably going to be inevitably fruitless. I must thank you for your opposition, it's helped me develop my opinions that much further (it seems I can only grow in the face of adversity).

Well, I can see how you might think that expressing a general hostility and talking about how you should do something about a hostile government is exactly the same as sending 150,000 of your troops into a country to overthrow the government, kill or wound 15,000, and destroy most of the capital in the process using tanks, artillery and air strikes.

kzt: that's not exactly the same as, but substantially closer to, Operation Just Cause, aka Just 'Cuz.

The methods are different; do you see a *moral* difference between a brute force invasion, and manipulating and/or funding locals into a coup d'etat? Would you oppose the former if it happened to your homeland, and accept the latter as OK? If you were a Chilean citizen and came across the FUBELT documents, would you say "oh, that's harmless talk"?

Do you perhaps have a larger point to make, on the scale of Frank's assertion that the USA and the USSR both maintained empires and were both ruthless in doing so? If you want to assert that the USA's Cold War policy is not only more sophisticated than the USSR's (almost anything done by the USSR was clumsy by American standards), but actually more respectful of other nation's right to self-determination, then do so on 4th of July weekend!