I have to agree with 3278 in this case, the more Cthuludreams post the more I am convinced (s)he has no idea what they're discussing, and further more the more (s)he posts the more I'm sure his/her game is nothing like my own-thankfully.

Entry to the marine corps requires a high school diploma. SINless in 2070 do not have any high school education at all. You do actually learn quite a lot in highschool. also the marine corps education programme is very extensive. If you don't trust me, check out the official history of gulf war 1 - estimating that it takes two years of intensive training on top of that high school diploma to make a capable infantryman. The 2070 enviroment is more complex.

Incidentally, we also know that poor nutrition causes poor mental development. The SINless don't even have food stamps. If you compare a sacrifice zone to anywhere it's not the bad areas of baltimore, it's somalia. It's quite likely that they would be in the situation kids in Somila are - one bad year while your growing up will retard your physical and mental development.

A modern high school graduate is much smarter and physically more capable than a Sacrifice Zone kid. We're not talking cream of the crop here - we are talking 'having an IQ above 80 and knows how to read and write'



The difference is simple - you think of the world of SR as something more like Baltimore than Basra. Given that, it is easy to understand how we reach different conclusions about what you would and would not do. What it is most probably like though is 1930s Beijing. Concessions granted to foreign powers who bring in their own troops to enforce law and order in their concessions, while the locals stave are employed as barely above slave labor and do a lot of drugs? Organised crime being rife?

Sounds familiar?

I think that you need more information on the Marine Corps before you can make that judgement... First Off, a high school diploma means almost nothing in America any more... I have seen many many examples of High School Graduates who cannot even read or perform basic math... explain to me how this is quality education... as for the Marine Corps education program... the only real Marine Corps education that you receive in Boot Camp is in History of the Corps, Protocol and Etiquette... the remaining only prepares you for basic MOS training (the stuff that everyone needs to know)... no where do they make any attempt to actually improve upon a grunt's actual education, unless the Individual pursues such an agenda through other options, or through after service education programs like the New GI Bill... as for an IQ of 80 and the ability to read... not in your life... teh individual I talked about earlier had a relevant IQ closer to 60 (His GT placed at 47, you only need a 40), and could read, sort of, at a 5th grade level... not exactly a winner there in the edcational department, so there goes your theory

As for training of 2 years to make a competent Infantryman... I call Bull... When my unit was deployed to Iraq, we received over 250 brand new recreuits, straight out of Infantry Training School... it takes only 13 weeks in ITS to make a competent Infantryman... anything else is just cake... and rarely do these raw infantrymen ever get any real, useful long-term experience unless they re-enlist for an additional term or two, so your position that it takes 2 years is crap... I know, I have been there...

Of course 2070 is more complex... there are people who are innately at genius level (in our world today) that have little or no education... so therefore, you can draw no parallels between the two times... there will be genius level individuals along side of very ignorant individuals in any society. education may make a difference, but you cannot say that just because someone is sinless it means that they are not intelligent and competent people, they just do not have the same opportunities... so what happens now days in this instance? many of the undereducated and poor will jon the various militaries of the worl (corporations) to obtain a legal status... path to legitimacy and a trade that pays them... 2070 will be no different in that regard, the only difference is the the MegaCorps will care less about their personnel than the various nations do today...

Your comparison to the various districts are not accurate... I would not see Baltimore vs Somalia... what I see is a difference that occurs now, Hollywood vs. Watts is a better example... or better yet, New York with a suburb modeled after Beirut... that is a more valid comparison for our topic of conversation...

As for your last comparison, yes it does sound familiar... sounds like a lot of Big Cities to me... lets see If I can list some of them for you... New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Ansterdam, Tehran, Paris (one of the worst actually), Kiev and Moscow to name just a few... the rich getting Richer and the Poor getting Poorer... sounds very familiar indeed...

Keep the Faith

1) If you seriously think a year 10 certificate means nothing, let me try another way of looking at:

Literacy rates in the US: 99.0%

Literacy Rates in Ethiopia: 35.9%

So yes, pretty much the US education system is pretty good, and in places without government is pretty bad!

Btw: From another study: Average IQ in the US - 98, average IQ in Somalia: 68. Why? Malnutrition and poor educational standards. Please note, these scores are not fully comparable with the American instituter of psychology scores below. However - let me make this real for you - this means 95% of Americans have a higher IQ than the average Somalian.

2) Figure about quality infantrymen isn't mine, it's the U.S. Armies. There is a difference between raw recruits and well trained troops. You even make the point yourself, unless you stick around, you don't have useful long term experience. If you'd like you can go back to WWII and compare fresh units vs veteran units?

3) IQ 60 is classified by the American institute of psychologists as 'mentally disabled' which was my point. 80 is borderline mental disability. I honestly didn't think the marines recruited from the short bus.

4) You don't think MOS training counts as training? Very interesting!



Sorry, I missed the concessions made to foreign powers with private police forces in those areas. You could take the embassys in the capitals as exceptions.
Can you please explain?

1. First off... 10 Year Certificate? In What... There is a distinct difference in Educational value between a Scientific Degree/Certificate , a Medical Degree/Certificate and an Artistic Degree/Certificate... and in fact, many Degrees are truly insignificant anymore... you can get a better paying job with a Degree of Arts in Basketweaving than if you did not have one, how does that determine that you are better qualified than someone without a degree at all? In my opinion, It Doesn't.

I guess that you would have to determine what literacy level the United States is using for competency... if it is 5th Grade Reading Level well, then there you go... there are Major Cities IN America that have a less than 50% graduation rate for High School... Tell me how that is quality education... Is it bad in other countries... Sure... But 50 Years ago, America had the most amazing Education across the World (we were 1st)... now, 50 years later, we are classified around 27th or so... Great leaps forward in education there, don't you think?

2. No wonder... I would agree that it takes the army 2 years to train an Infantryman , while it only takes 13 weeks to train a Marine Infantryman... that makes a lot of sense to me (this is a minor Jab at the Army, don't take it too personally, I am a Marine after all)... My point being is that your numbers are way off... you can get quality troops within a year... you never really have "Veteran" level troops (in the regular forces anyway) unless they are seeing some kid of action, (now this does not mean actaul "war"... my unit spent several deployments in contested areas in Asia and Central America that would qualify, not to mention the First Gulf War), or have several years to develop this in force... Unfortunately, for a long time, teh standard enlistment for an American recruit was/is only 4 years... not a lot of time to develop exceptional, highly trained leaders in the military... Special Forces units have it better, but hten again, very few 1st Term Enlistments qualify for the most elite... and a gret many still wash out of their initial special forces training... it takes a very special person to be Special Forces (Recon, SEALS, Airborne, Rangers or Green Berets... Funny that the Army has 3 different units of special forces, while the Marine Corps/Navy only needs one... Another Joke )

And as an additional point, Not having Education does not make an individual unintgelligent, it just makes them uneducated... IQ is a poor measure of functionality in our world...

3. IQ's Above 60 are acceptable (when I joined anyway, that may have changed since then, but, if I remember, recently restrictions have once again been loosened due to manpoower issues, in all of the services), many people with IQ's that low have problems (if I remember correctly he stated his IQ at 67), and this man had some problems, but that does not make him disfunctional... he was a very good Marine, and followed orders well, and performed his duties as required (not NCO Material, but he night have made a good Officer... Joke )... he was a credit to the unit... I was glad to call him my friend..

Besides, there are a great many people with IQ's in the Normal to High Range that range from somewhat to exceptionally dysfunctional, so I still fail to see your point here...

4. MOS Training for Infantrymen is only 13 Weeks, we were discussing Infantrymen... as for the other arms of the Corps, some schools take a year or more, some take less... what exactly is your point here?

1) Year 10 certificate is Australian for a US high school diploma. My bad! The US is currently the world leader in devaluing undergraduate degrees. The concept of 2 year associate degrees doesn't exist in most places. It can be hard to generalise that experince.

2) I'm not american. The specifics of the american education system do not intrest me that much. The comparison is the US today vs US in 2070. The SINless of today do have public schooling. In the future they do not. We can therefore assume a significant drop in educational attainment.

3) Exactly. If your friend who you describe as unsuitable for promotion is the average quality of your troops, where do you get NCOs from? Officers? Technical Specialists? Pilots?

4) So in some arms of the corps it takes 12 years of training to product a competent infantryman (high school diploma + MOS training). I'm entirely okay with that estimate. My point is that the SINless of the future do not have that degree of educational attainment. It is probably impossible to teach people to understand how to maintain a tank engine if they cannot read or write.

Just quick further detail about your friend and reinforcing that he is an isolated case: http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep98/html/b6.html

He's in the bottom category which is capped at 4% of total intake and only if they can product a high school diploma, otherwise the DoD thinks they are too hard to train.

The average US army recruit is actually IQ ~105. Numbers are difficent to compare directly, but we can see their is a significant gap between what the US military needs/wants, and what a hypothetical SINless population can actually produce.

1. Cool, Now I know... And yes, I agree with the devaluing a degere... probably ahs a lot to do with us dumbing down our educational systems and teaching to tests rather than acquiring actual knowledge...

2. Possibly, but My Point is that Education does not imply intelligence... nor does Intelligence imply education... they can exist as seperate entities, and often do...

3. WHAT? Where are you getting that information. I used my friend as an example that the Corps accepts individuals from Functional but not quite educated to High level genius... You so missed the point ... yes, the average Marine probably has an IQ of 100 or thereabouts, some higher, some lower... those with aptitude and ability tend to advance through the enlisted , those without become officers (sorry, had to say that; it is not always true, I have had a few good Officers in the Corps over my eight years of active duty, but it is a well known fact that NCO's run the Corps, Not Officers)... Just like in any other society or organization... Where are you getting your assumptions from? No Offense, but Wow...

4. Education from High School HAS NO REAL BEARING on MOS Training or Military Competence in the US Marine Corps for Infantrymen (in some cases, if you do not have the education levels/aptitudes, you do not qualify for the appropriate MOS... like Intelligence or Aircraft Mechanic... those that don't become infantrymen, and those that fail out of their MOS school, also tend to become infantrymen)... which was what I pointed out in several of my last posts... it takes 13 Weeks for MOS training for an Infantryman in the US Marines... What part of that is not clear? There are more MOS's in the Marine Corps than Infantryman... there are Artillerymen, Tank Drivers, Military Intelligence, Cooks, Supply, Etc... just like any other national major military... the fact that the Marine Corps almost doubles the other US Branches of Service for Infantry training shows that man for man, the Marine Corps Infantry is better trained and more proficient than any other basic militrary arm in the World... and is often the equivalent of lower level special forces troops in a lot of ways... (It is Possible that I have a Bias here, but hey, Sue me, I am a Marine after all)

Keep the Faith

Missed this post while I was posting...

I agree that he was an edge case... Most definitely... My point is that he WAS accepted; and the raw IQ of recruits may have indeed jumped a few points since I have been in, however, I do believe that this statistic will indeed be dropping as teh years go by and teh Manpower crises continues...

The comparison for 2070 is that these kinds of people will find employment if they want it... they have just got to want it bad enough... If someone who is borderline (lowest 4%) trainable is taken in, the vast majority of people will have the opportunity if they want it...

Keep the Faith

The point we are discussing is can you use SINless people as guards, military and other functions. Do they have the capability. The problem is the SINless can be resonably assumed to have the sort of educational attainment that you get in Somalia, Burkino Faso and Ethopia. These places have some schooling and even universities!

Your friend actually has much the same capability as the average Somalian or SINless. But instead of being a bottom 1% entrant, he would be a top 50% entrant. Consider the difference in attainment between him and the average marine. There are people with that much attainment below him in the SINless pool of recruits!

The NCO thing is actually a very western way of running militarizes, and it's important because it shows you can recruit talented individuals to be the staff sergeants of the world. Studies of the pre-fall state of the Russian armies noted that because the NCO corps was so poor, the officers had to run the show.



Western militaries are highly trained forces. That is the point. You're losing sight of the objective here. The question is

A) Can we use SINless as the majority of security forces

my answer is: NO because they do not have even close to required level of educational attainment to be effective marines. In your own words, the average SINless is not suitable for the duties required.



this really shows you do not understand my point. My point is, in the future, he is not borderline!!! He is a average sinless person!

*sigh*

In order to enter the military, you have to take a sort-of IQ test, the ASVAB. The higher you score, the better you're supposed to do in your chosen position, and the more positions you have to choose from. An average score for a GED holder is 50. The minimum entry score for the Marines is 32, for the Army it's 31. While I don't know of any direct ASVAB/IQ comparison, I do think these scores indicate that you can have a fairly low IQ and still join the armed forces.

Sure but you are ignoring the fact that with the invent of simsense and knowsofts actual education isn't really necessary, sure educated guards may be "better", but they are hardly necessary when you can simply beam the knowledge directly into their skulls with a single cheap piece of technology.

No, they won't. The barrens are not Watts or Compton, they are Mogadishu. The cops are the troops in Task Force Ranger, they come and in force when they need to, otherwise they stay out. There are VERY few real jobs in the barrens. There are VERY few people who recruit from the barrens. When someone looks to hire someone in the barrens what he's looking for is someone with huge potential. Smart, motivated, probably self-educated. There just isn't anyone who will hire the borderline retarded when there are lots of people who are not IQ < 70 out there.

It's a dystopia. There is no opportunity for vast majority in the barrens, no matter how badly you want it. Kids like that at best join a gang at 12 and get used for cannon fodder by the guys in their 30s who run the gangs.

Yes, I linked to the DOD published ASVAB results previously when discussing entry requirements. It's a standardised test that breaks people down into categories dependant on how much above/below the mean they scored.

But please, you're completely underestimating how big the gap is between the average marine and the average SINless. The average sinless (inferred from third world societies today) is more than two standard deviations below the average US citizen.

That means the average AFQT score of the SINless is ~10 (Caculating it's actually 5, but I need to know how smart a GED holder is compared to the US average).

I.E the SINless cannot pass the test.



Yes. The projected AFQT scores of SINless is 10, as people with similar educational attainment to the SINless score comparably in the bottom 5% of the US militaries AFQT tests

Ten

Please, stop telling me it's 'fairly low IQ and you can still join' - these guys have no education and functional brain damage due to be starved as kids.



The average LOG score will be 1. It is reasonable to assume that other physical & mental attributes would be similarly impacted as the low LOG scores are due to impacted brain development due to malnutrition.

Excuse me, no offense meant, but where are you getting the ASVAB/IQ comparison? I couldn't find it. The ASVAB, however, has a standard deviation of 10. That means, since the average score is 50, someone with an IQ two SD below the mean would score a 30. Since the minimum score for the Army and Marines is 31 and 32, respectively, it's not out of the question that a undereducated SINless person could qualify.

I don't know where you got that five from, but the math doesn't support you.

I'm not getting a straight comparison across.

Also, afaik, the AFQT which gives you a percentile rating compared to the % of the general population. The ASVAB as taken has a lower IQ scores of the US military have been measured in other tests, which is why I know what the general admissions score is (and that it's higher than the average population), but all I'm doing with it is just validating that starting with the assumption that average US military recruits have an IQ of 100 or greater.

So what I'm doing is:

IQ scores in Britian & the US are 100 with a standard deviation of 15. IQ scores in Somalia, Ethopia and Burkino Faso are 68 (or lower, in the case of Burkino Faso). Therefore we can see that mean IQ scores in Somalia are two std. devs. from the the UK & USA

The ASVAB measures what percentile of the general US population you are in as renomalised in (1995/7) - so if you are two std devs. below the mean, you're in the bottom 5%, giving you an AFQT of 5.

Of course IQ is an imprecise science, so let's round it up to 10. You could even go 20 if you want.

My overall stance is dependant on the fact that the AFQT scores will track against the IQ test scores with some degree of comparison. It is likely that they will as the overall AFQT score focuses on specific areas that are similar to an IQ test: AFQT scores are computed using the Standard Scores from four ASVAB subtests: Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), Paragraph Comprehension (PC), and Word Knowledge (WK)

About to AFQT/ASVAB



DoD stance on recruits



The average SINless is a Category V, which the US army does not considerable trainable.

And your point is Cthulhudreams? In a world where ( Logic 2-3 ) is "average" even someone with ( Logic 1 ) is functional, and I would argue that as bad as the Barrens are, they aren't quite as bad as you want to make them out to be.

Besides, even if the Barrens were as bad as you are painting them to be the SINless are hardly contained to the Barrens.

Logical 3 is average by the book (though I agree, 2 makes more sense). Either way a guard with mental stats of 1/1/1/1 is at a significant disadvantage to a guard with 3/3/3/3.



I'm not painting the barrens as that bad. There are schools that you stay in sometimes, you don't starve to death, merely regularly go hungry. I think that is probably in line with the books. The actual barrens are probably much worse - at least their are jobs to be had to in Burkino Faso and Ethopia!

There is a second line of SINless - the guys that haven't been living out here as part of the Helloweeners since 2020 or whatever, but they are the people shadowrunners come from.

Sure and I think that I've been saying that educated guards woudl be considered a "better" choice, but that the fact that the less desirable guards are still viable is threat enough to allow the corps to treat even the "average" guys so poorly that they might as well be slaves.

Or at least that is the point that I've been trying to get across, a stupid but functional guard is viable due to the magic of knowsofts, and average guards don't require tons of training either.

*EDIT*

And I'd argue that even amongst the "second line" of SINless the people who are crazy enough to be Runners are in the minorty.

I dunno about you, but I'm uncomfortable about giving people classed as mentally disabled hand grenades. It just has a certain ring of 'looming disaster' to it.



The second line of SINless makes no sense conceptually. Assuming you still want to eat, you need to get a job. Which means you get a SIN. Which means the second line of SINless evaporates.

It's just impossible to stay off the net unless you have no skills (in which case the net is happy for you to do that) or no desire to eat.



Unless you're relying on skillsofts, it does take tons of training to become a competent soldier (just to be clear, I'm not talking about rentacops, I'm talking about the guys who guard Renraku facilities that have important and commercially sensitive data). This means you're talking about way more than just 'standing their and looking mean' you're talking about leading small squads, designing patrols etc.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports.../RAND_TR193.pdf

Looks at how much your AFQT score (not! your training) makes you. Going from Category IV to IIIB results in a 34% increase in accuracy for gunners. The best bit is that category IV personnel don't even know they are doing it wrong. If you ask them to tell you what was incorrect about their operation of the equipment, 97% of cat I personnel will tell you 1 or more issues, almost 30% of IV personnel don't even identify any errors.

You're suggesting putting category 5, who are less capable again, in charge of complex security systems! People who are literally incapable of identifying that the system is not working.

I dunno about you, but I would not be particularly threatened by that sort of person. Check out the survival stats in a battlefield simulation - 68% for Cat I and 26% in IV. Again, will drop further in V we can presume, if the relationship holds down to 16%. They are also about half as likely to actually get the job done.

Anyway, these disadvantages are perhaps best simulated in shadowrun by setting the SINless and slaves stats very low. You're looking at 1s across the board and the uneducated flaw stock.

Is there no way for someone without a SIN to make money? No underground economy, no illegitimate enterprises hiring illegals, no black market, no criminal work for pay?

Giving nearly retarded people hand grenades seems a very Cyberpunk thing to do though, just like relying on programs as opposed to real skills.

I disagree with you on the "Second Line SINless", in the old days it was fragging hard to get a SIN so even good people slipped through the cracks and there is always going to be grey and black econamies to pick up the slack. Hell, even in real life the concept of "cash under the table" is very real.

And although a "stupid" guard who has to access his 'softs to realize that the system is fragged may not be as much as a threat as a smart guard, the fact that the corps are willing to rent both of them automatic weapons and premission to shoot more-or-less at whim should be fragging scary.

Of course, remember that I don't buy the idea that Shadowrunners should be "world class" no matter what char-gen allows for either.

Oh you can go work for a drug cartel or something, I assume lots of people do that. infact, I fully expect that drug cartels are the biggest employers in this area.

However, I assumed that was just as crazy as being a shadowrunner - being in that it is the same thing being a professional criminal. As for hiring illegals for manual labour or whatever, get a robot.



The sample includes people who have passed the additional trainings and certifications from the US military and had large quantities of US military simulator time - giving them exactly the sort of level of experince you'd get from a know soft. They don't know that there are problems, so there is no reason to assume that the knowsoft blokes will too.

If he cannot successfully open & operate an encrypted communications link to his fellow guards, the shadow runners are going to nail his ass.

Except that for the most part, robots cost more in the long run then merely picking some warm bodies off of a street corner and paying them less then slave wages at best. If a drone breaks then you've got to pay to fix it, if a SINless gets hurt then you simply kick him back on the street or put a bullet in his head and sell his organs if you think the money is worth the trouble.

That's the rub - drones in SR are stupid cheap. The cheapest you can pay someone is a take home of 2k a month (less than that and they don't eat), and a robot costs 3k-10k upfront. Assuming annual maint costs of 1/3rd of the sticker price, and a capital write off over 3 years, then your drone costs between 6k and 20k, whereas a low paid human costs 72k over the same period.

Edit: I actually figure that people on 'low' lifestyles are people in the services industry that employers haven't worked out how to replace with robots yet.

Well, I probably think being a professional criminal is a lot less crazy than you do, so we'll chalk that up to different life experiences, but it's been my experience that underclasses find ways to eat, cracks in the system that allow them to continue to survive, even under desperate conditions. This gets much easier when the underclass exists within the same general physical location as a highly successful society. I think the statistics for the number of SINless existing in Shadowrun imply that they must be surviving somehow.


SR4 has made this a reasonably economical choice, given that for 5 months of Squatter lifestyle, you can buy a Manservant-3 to do the same work, and with a Pilot of 3, to boot. Yes, it's less inventive, but in many cases, this isn't significant. [Prior to SR4, this was not a particularly valid solution.] And yet I would think there would still be many, many situations in which a robot is simply less well-suited to the requirements of the position than a SINless metahuman. But your vision of Shadowrun differs strongly from any I've encountered previously, which troubles me very little now that I realize it.

Naw, you can pay people far less than that, for "grunt" work I'd say a Squatter Lifestyle is a much better fit, and hell, remember that given the lifestyle rules you really only have to pay people half of whatever lifestyle they are meant to be placed at, a third if you figure that the corps want their employees to be in a neverending spiral of debt to the corp.

Well, obviously. It's not like all the people in Mogadishu just keel over and die. I'd characterize it as a pretty crazy place to live though.

As for the robot comment: see previous - there are obviously jobs in the services industry that you cannot automate, but yeah.



Fair enough I guess. At this point there are some very marginal edge case jobs that you can get people to do very badly (with 2/3rds the dice of a robot) for much the same money. Hurray!

Though at this point.. you run into the other soviet russia problem. Russian border guards were the best and brightest and paid and treated very well, because they could literally take 4 steps forward and go somewhere else. Now in the future there might not be many places to go, but if you pocket the iPhone prototype you're supposed to be guarding, I would imagine options open up.

Living in the Robert Taylor Homes isn't the same thing as being sinless in the barrens. At least the SR is written up, a sinless person without a comlink and fake sin can't even walk down the street without a passing patrol drone noting that he isn't transmitting a SIN and possibly being stopped.

At best it's like living in a shantytown on the outskirts of Juarez and looking at the towers of El Paso. It's not impossible to get there, but it isn't going to be easy or free.

Remembering I'm new to SR4, what do you mean by this?

Just noticed in the Lifestyle rules in SR4a that you can only buy one lifestyle. WTF?

Yes, indeed it is. I don't perceive the Barrens as being equal to Mogadishu, however. Partially this is a difference of play style, but also it's an issue of geography.

See Kzt's point. The way they are written up, they are EXACTLY like Mogadishu right down to the random outbreaks of gunfire and Lonestar 'raids' where they just shoot up some houses, nor are you allowed to even go near an A zone without being arrested for the crime of not having any papers.

OK, CD, I see where you're getting your numbers from, but you're still doing the comparison wrong.

The ASVAB doesn't compare against the general civilian population. It scores where you stand in relation to other people who took the test. This is why it's an IQ test more than an aptitude test. Assuming a direct correlation between g and ASVAB scores, someone who is two SD below the mean on one IQ test is going to be two SD below the mean on another, with a margin for error. That means such people could easily get a passing score on the ASVAB.

Additionally, the ASVAB pretends to be an aptitude test. So, it includes things like assembling objects, which wouldn't necessarily be Logic-based. That could push the scores up for those with a low Logic score and scarce Knowledge skills.

So, I'm sorry, but your comparison is wrong. The ASVAB is normalized against the ASVAB, not the general population.

This is not correct. The ASVAB is normalized against a sample of the general population between the ages of 17 & 24. The last re-norming included almost 12000 candidates in this age group drawn from the civilian population in 2004.

Yeah, I have a difficult time buying that, from a practical perspective, but I agree the SR4 rules provide for this, implicitly and explicitly. That said, this depends strongly on which street you're walking on, much as it does today. Not every street has patrol drones, for one thing, and again, the fact that SINless exist in large numbers implies they're getting by somehow. If it's not by working illegally, how?

Mogadishu is quite a lot worse than what's written up about the Barrens in Shadowrun. To be honest, I've lived in neighborhoods in America with random outbreaks of gunfire and police raids that amount to "just shoot[ing] up some houses."


And A zones are the only places one could go to get money?

How do the SINless survive in your game?

An explanation of ASVAB norming exists here, and is illuminating.

[edit: I may as well post the illuminating bit: "The current national norms for the ASVAB were implemented in 2004. A nationally representative sample consisting of about 6,000 American youths aged 18-23 was utilized in the creation of the norms. These youths were identified from a screening of over 90,000 housing units, as part of the Profile of American Youth 1997 (PAY97) study. In the summer and fall of 1997, the CAT-ASVAB was administered to study participants under standardized conditions. The performance of this reference group was then used to develop new norms for the ASVAB."]

Basically whenever you fail to pay your lifestyle costs you roll a single die and as long as your roll is higher than the number of months you haven't paid nothing happens. The way I read the rules would work as follows.

Month 1: Missed Payment -- Have to roll 2+

Month 2: Missed Payment -- Have to roll 3+

Month 3: Make ONE Payment -- Everything resets

Month 4: Missed Payment -- Have to roll 2+


Of course, bad things happen when you miss a payment and roll badly your lifestyle is downgraded one level and you owe one payment that has to be made or else.

My word. Shadowrun's economy would be completely untenable. And I'd love to complain, but all I can think is, "Hey, that's just like the housing bust we're in!" Funny.

Thanks for the assist!

*chuckles* Aye, one of the reasons why I keep banging my head against the wall while screaming that the corps aren't "captilists" they are "fedual fiefs" at best.

well, it's got warlords, drug problems and arms markets too, not sure what the difference is.


Okay, large scale argiculture is really difficult in the 6th world, because if you try and herd some cattle, you'll eventually have calves that breath fire and/or turn people to stone, which is an issue for you the farmer.Which is why everything is made from soy. But as agriculture has many of the same problems, I just assume people grow stuff in vats. So most people exist eating vat food, which is actually pretty cheap.

Power sats are referenced in the books, and I have them as cannon - people steal power off the relatively prolific power sats. No-one notices/cares because there is overcapacity and no batteries.

Secondly, productivity will continue its march onwards. as a result, staples can be made pretty cheaply.

The CBD of most cities is the corporate concessions.

Then there is a huge belt of people who do the various engineering and technical jobs required to make mechanization work. IQs have been going up for quite some time, and by 2070, the average IQ of the UK will have moved to 125 or so from 100. Education will be extensive as anything less than 17 years of schooling can be replaced by drones, so most people will have masters degrees. This is the shiny happy future!

Outside of them is the C zones then the barrens. There is a very stark line of 'do you have a masters degree or not' People out here do not, and as such what these people do is have a services job, prostitution, arms dealing or deal drugs. You can scrape by on very low incomes. The barrens are Mogadishu. The cops don't go there... ever, and you can buy guns, cocaine and prostitutes on the street off the local gangers.

However, the narcotics trade is HUGE. Like.. MASSIVE. It's 1930's china in size. It's bigger than the total earnings of the government. It cannot operate in the corporate concessions and the A zones because the police are all over it like a rash (you can literally get 10 importing cocaine convictions for walking down the street in the concessions), so people from here take their money with them and go over the boarder to buy it.

well, it's got warlords, drug problems and arms markets too, not sure what the difference is.


Okay, large scale argiculture is really difficult in the 6th world, because if you try and herd some cattle, you'll eventually have calves that breath fire and/or turn people to stone, which is an issue for you the farmer.Which is why everything is made from soy. But as agriculture has many of the same problems, I just assume people grow stuff in vats. So most people exist eating vat food, which is actually pretty cheap.

Power sats are referenced in the books, and I have them as cannon - people steal power off the relatively prolific power sats. No-one notices/cares because there is overcapacity and no batteries.

Secondly, productivity will continue its march onwards. as a result, staples can be made pretty cheaply.

The CBD of most cities is the corporate concessions.

Then there is a huge belt of people who do the various engineering and technical jobs required to make mechanization work. IQs have been going up for quite some time, and by 2070, the average IQ of the UK will have moved to 125 or so from 100. Education will be extensive as anything less than 17 years of schooling can be replaced by drones, so most people will have masters degrees. This is the shiny happy future!

Outside of them is the C zones then the barrens. There is a very stark line of 'do you have a masters degree or not' People out here do not, and as such what these people do is have a services job, prostitution, arms dealing or deal drugs. You can scrape by on very low incomes. The barrens are Mogadishu. The cops don't go there... ever, and you can buy guns, cocaine and prostitutes on the street off the local gangers. Ther eis also lots of small manufacturing business, food stands, all sorts of stuff slum style because Renraku cannot operate out here - the local gangers cut their teeth throwing flaming trash cans through Renraku's shopfronts in the A zones.

However, the narcotics trade is HUGE. Like.. MASSIVE. It's 1930's china in size. It's bigger than the total earnings of the US government. It cannot operate in the corporate concessions and the A zones because the police are all over it like a rash (you can literally get 10 importing cocaine convictions for walking down the street in the concessions), so people from here take their money with them and go over the boarder to buy it.

Backing the discussion up to education again, I want to take a moment to look at it from the corporation side of things.

A guard is a citizen of the corporation. Born into a family of guards, probably a 3rd generation if human. Quite possibly from a military or police family, historically. He was raised in corp schools to be a corp guard. He was taught everything they wanted him to know and nothing more. Of the things they spent a good deal of time drilling into his skull are included a strong fear of the world outside, suspicion of other corps and fidelity to the corporation which has raised and housed him since his birth. The fear of being cut off from his known world, exiled to the streets/barrens as a penniless, non-person is probably a fate worse than death to him. And that's exactly what would be done to him if he showed any indication where he might "defect" to some other security job. And, if he did try and join up with another outfit, he wouldn't make it in the door. They wouldn't trust him. They might take him on after extensive brainwashing, but that's the same kind of expense as grabbing a ganger off the street and putting him through the wringer. Who would sign up for that expecting "a better life" out of the deal?

As to the personal cost of housing the guard, all the overhead would be paid for by the corp. His food costs would be at or near cost of production. Same as his housing, entertainment, and, well, security. I envision them living on-site in dormitory style apartments, fully subsidized by their employers. I don't see them giving much thought to retirement, and if they do retire, I imagine the corp just scooping all their assets and leaving them dead in a ditch, discarded like a spent shell.

Don't you see how that is totally non functional? YOU are the security guards! YOU KNOW what is going to happen at 55, because YOU do it to everyone else. YOU are the one who liquidates people!

That precludes generational guards - because that means you stole your dad's stuff and kicked him out, and it;s going to happen to you. So why wouldn't YOU at 50 steal everyone's shit and scamper for the hills?

Why the hell would you wait for it to happen to you? You may as well start theft straight up. Need to steal enough stuff to provide for retirement.

You would have the worst 'guarding' ever seen in human history.

That's assuming only one level of security. Only the corporate inner circle would have any idea about what happens to assets put out to pasture. That's some basic information control. Maybe they hire outside operators like shadowrunning scum to handle that side of things. Just a group of guys who get a name and location, then, *spack* brains on walls. Easy money. Their murders would do well to motivate people to stay on if really looked into what happened after someone leaves the safety of the enclave. Couple months in the mean world and they get torn up by gangers and thugs.
You don't actually imagine that these places would let people retire with heads full of privileged info, right? 35 years of intimate knowledge with their security apparatus isn't something they want out in the world. I see it sort of like that show The Prisoner. Anyone with any real value gets shipped away to a retirement home they can never leave, but, if they already know everything you know, you just get offed.

If you know that at 50 you'll be kicked out penniless on the street the smart people will start to figure out that they should find some of those shadow runners and come to an arrangement... He knows when and where the good stuff is and how it's secured. All he needs are some associates with guns.

You're talking about a company that employees 40 million people. It's the size of the US government. Think about that. You think ugly things don't leak out? How many people are going to have to know about this?

Yeah, a smart/ plugged-in guy like corp spider or rigger nearing the age of retirement may try to find a way to convert all his corp script into a more fluid capital and organize his own extraction. Burn out of there before the Logan's Run squad shows up to lock him in the retirement castle. Sounds like a good run concept to me.

Dude, don't you think that people might want to find out where their dad is? I mean, he was here literally last week, and now he isn't. We didn't have a funeral.... People are totally going to notice that their relatives disappear at age 55, and that there are literally no Ares employees in the world over age 55.



Plus, the corporate inner circle has to liquidate every janitor and whatever else. Don't you think an operation that kills 27 thousand people a WEEK is going to draw some attention. Don't you think that killing 27 THOUSAND people a week is going to draw some attention? Don't you think the people that kill 27 THOUSAND people a week are actually going notice that their co-workers disappear at age 55? Don't you think they are going to get really pissy?

You're actually running an operation that is generating as many kills as the holocaust!

Meh. One enclave has about 300k resident citizens. We're looking at a few thousand "explained" disappearances and deaths per site per year. I don't see family units as being that tight anyway. Kids are raised in boarding programs from age 5 upwards. I also wouldn't expect retirement age to be a mandatory deadline across the board, and if we're extrapolating retirement age from what we see today, I'd put the average age somewhere in the 70s for most employees. You keep them on a farm somewhere and drug them to senility and death. Guys like guards would retire considerably earlier, but they'd also likely see upwards promotion to more and more elite units, until they end up in one of the elite units chosen to compete in the Desert Wars. Right there you've got the perfect retirement package. Death games in a radioactive wasteland. You want to talk about job satisfaction? Desert. Wars. "You've just been chosen to fight and die for sport. Good luck!" Wait, who would want that job?