I was reading some articles in The Economist that sparked some Shadowrun thoughts (you may be surprised, but this happens all the time and is the prime reason I read that magazine).

The emerging economies, led by the BRIC (Brazil Russia India China), but also others including African countries, are more and more being regarded not as outsourcing and manufacturing hubs but also as countries churning out cutting-edge innovations. Basically, necessity is the mother of all inventions. These countries have VAST markets, but where each consumer is independantly, well, poor. But together, they form gigantic markets everyone would just love to tap. So, locals innovate. They create technology that is simply cheaper to produce, while still being of good quality. Tata has a 2000$ car; an Indian hospital charges 2000$ for open heart surgery rather than the American 20,000$ (with the same end-quality level) by performing operations according to the Henry Ford model (patients are led through a prep "chain" before reaching doctors that do nothing else but surgery after surgery), etc. One particular innovation is cellphone banking in Africa. Thanks to a cellphone with a built-in fingerprint scanner, and of course the correct information infrastructure, a banker can bike to a small village, sit down under the shade of a tree, and take care of the banking needs of people as they come to him. They are authenticated using their fingerprint, and the banking transaction is recorded over the cellular network.

This all relates to Shadowrun through the idea of the SINless mass. Shadowrn society is sharply divided into haves and have-nots. The shiny new technology is of curse in the hands of the corporate citizens. In exchange for their souls, these citizens get all the goo-gahs to obliterate their minds on. However, the SINless would surely find ways to adapt this technology to their own ends. Banking in the Barrens might similarly be handled by a guy with a commlink - similar in fact to those dudes in Lagos were described. Men of trust that handle people's finances. Anyway, my thought was just that a lot of the innovations being applied to today's emerging markets probably have their equivalents amongst SINless society. They may be unwashed masses, but they have needs too. We often imagine the needy as having no way to fill their needs because solutions are too expensive, but there is ALWAYS a guy that will fill that needs in a way suited to this micro-economy.

Mostly, I imagine gangs running mikro economies, where the gang as a whole gathers resources, and you get a part of that by being member, or having your firstbourne be a member, or whatever fits the situation. In fact, I don't think that is far from how gangs work in places like south africa.

gangs, organized crime, fixers.

iirc, there are mentions of crime run banks in unwired. And heck, was there not news some months ago about a stock market being run in the major pirate port in somalia? Where anyone could get a cut of the profits by financing a crew by money or physical goods? Iirc, one lady had sponsored them with a RPG that she had gotten as part of a divorce.

hmm, thinking about it, maybe next time the johnson can pay the runners in a couple of cases of medicine or similar, thats hard to come by in the barrens?

a wall street for pirate operations.

in effect. Funny enough tho, the original problem that lead to the pirate activity, international deep sea trawlers, have largely gone away thanks to said pirate activity.

Well the tons of other social problems that contribute to piracy has certainly not gone away. There is still poverty and unlawfulness in Somalia, and major oil corp exploitation in Nigeria that destroys the primary industries such as fishing.

But back to OP... shadow banking for SINless is indeed already part of the setting, and even fairly poor SINless can get loans from gangers and mafias in the Barrens.

My point is exactly the opposite. While it's of course undeniable criminal gangs are always there to fill in services, the point is that lawful enterprises (or close enough to it) will eventually develop and fill those needs, rather than gangs (though they probably operate by paying a cut to them). Megacorps can tap that market by making cheaper versions of their commlinks. It's better to make some money than to abandon it all to piracy and knock-offs.

the thing is, the sinless, in the eyes of the law, basically do not exist. They cant vote, they cant get insurance, nothing. They are the illegal immigrants taken the logical endpoint.

oh, and i am sure that the megas sell stuff to the sinless. Especially products that would be illegal or highly PR risky to sell to the wageslaves.

You guys never hear of entrepreneurs? All cash transactions, no taxes, no records. Maybe individual business men filling that need in SR is overlooked or tossed out because it doesn't make the setting bleak enough (power only in the hands of huge govt, huge corps and violent gangs).

fixers? And yes, there have been talk about independent vendors of various kinds in SR history, but i think for the most part they are reselling corp goods.

A mega is an independent nation. Are you going to arrest Russia over the RBN and associates stealing from US citizens and corps?

The options to deal with a mega are limited to financial pressure, as in boycotts, and acts of war. Acts of war includes attempting to arrest mega executives or trying to shut down the Renraku comlinks R Us store in the barrens.

However the whole concept of the Barrens is as insane as the idea that corps have extraterritorial status, so what you do in a game needs to be a trade-off as to how crazy do you want things to get.

How exactly is the concept of Barrens insane.

This ignores that the gangs have access to forms of leverage denied to the corps. For example, the gangs can institutionalize violence. The corps can use violence, but not too much, and the ROI isn't as great. If people hear that Ares has been plucking cybereyes from girls whose parents took out loans for the operation, that's a HUGE PR hit for Ares, SINless or not. If people hear the Mafia did it, that makes them just sound more hard core. Ares can't go around openly selling stolen goods either. If Ares derails a shipment of these Renraku 'commlinks', Ares can't sell them out of Ares shops. They sell them to the mafia to flip them. Finally, Ares can't offically sell dangerous weapons to SINless, because that would be seen as politically unwise. However, the SINless are one of Ares's biggest market segments. What do they do? 'Lose' a few truckloads to the mafia, who then resells them at a mark-up. This is especially good for weapons which are going to be destroyed anyway.

The underworld provides a built-in governance, distribution and enforcement system among a low-profit, high-risk population. I can't imagine the corps NOT just buying a gang and doing their business through that. Everyone profits. The alternative is they run against the gang, pay to set up their own infrastructure, then pay again when the 'competition' looks to push them out.

You can't have an area that is totally abandoned by police (but not actively barricaded) in the middle of a major urban area without massive impacts. Essentially it becomes a refuge for criminals that make their living by attacking corporate sites, taxpayers and voters. It becomes a running sore that will steadily expand as criminals gain access to more neighborhoods. It's like the idea that you have biker gangs in colors that make their living attacking travelers on the interstates, including in downtown Seattle, while the police and security forces were unable to do anything. This in a game in which the cops not only had a standard airborne surveillance drone, but said standardized and mass produced cheap drone had a medium machinegun?

There isn't enough money in these to be worth it and the risks are even bigger then doing it openly. If it's a big political hit to have Ares doing something is is going to be less of a hit when you get proof that Ares is paying criminals to do it for them? And if you can keep that from being reported why can't you just keep the fact that Ares in doing it directly from being reported?

There just isn't any serious money in small arms. There is a reason why WallMart employs about two million people and FNH, the largest small arms maker in the world, employs about 10,000. So the only people at Ares who can really benefit are the employees who are stealing from Ares and selling to criminals. I suspect that Ares has an interest in knowing more about these people.

I've always heard of the Barrens to be actively barricaded with large walls and manned checkpoints. Where does it say they aren't?

We're also talking about an area that isn't necessarily in the middle of a major urban area. Redmond and the surrounding environs got obliterated by the eruption of Mt. Ranier. It was cheaper and more expedient to evacuate the citizens (read, SINners) of the area and cordon it off rather than try to rebuild it. Plus, it gives the dregs of society somewhere to go where the people don't need to look at them. It provides a centralized location where the 'Star can direct their efforts to contain and leave the rest of the 'plex a little safer.

It's that or spend untold trillions of nuyen to clean up and rebuild an area filled with nonpersons. Why oh why would they spend that kind of money on non-citizens?

You're talking a retailer versus a manufacturer. FNH doesn't require millions of employees to build guns, but Wal-Mart requires millions to sell them.

I'll take a moment to grin about what I just said. Theeere we go.

Anyway, of course there's money in small guns. Soldiers need weapons. Security forces need weapons. Private citizens, where applicable, need weapons. Small arms provide a market for manufacturers to keep paying the bills. Let's face it - if there wasn't money to be made in small arms, we would not have the magnificent preponderance of ordnance that we do today, and as described in the core books and subsequent armory companions.

Ares need not be found to be 'paying' someone to get their stuff on the market - that's what fixers are for. The merchandise in question just needs to be in a well-enough secure location that can be broken into, or shipped using a system that's just good enough to make runners work to hack it.

Or the mob, Yaks, or what-have-you just pay Louie the gate guard a couple grand to look the other way while their boy fiddles with the bill of lading for it to say it was lost as defective or damaged during shipment. Bada bing.

i wonder how much the barrens was inspired by this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronx#The_Bro...ure_and_in_song

while scaled up to the nth degree as everything else in SR.

You actually can have this for the very reason that you give. The fact that the overwatch drone is so ubiquitous, including the scans of people for broadcasting of SIN info and the like, makes it very easy to load up with these at boarders of barrens areas to keep the want-nots in their area. The fact is that yes at times these elements can leak over the boarders, and in concerned efforts maybe in bigger numbers, but Lone Star/KE/whoever can respond and make sure that they stay put. So I would say that the craziness that you say can't be is actually proven by your reason that it can't be!

Now, overall, I'm not disputing this, but the exact above distribution channel does not exclude non-criminal entrepreneurs, nor does it exclude the fact the corps - big or small - competing with their cheap-ass products. The Ares SINless 2000 commlink is dirt cheap and hardly ever works, but the Renraku Sucks2BU commlink is ALSO dirt cheap BUT it's more robust. I.e., products evolve for the poor people too. And perhaps it's not the Renraku Sucks2BU, perhaps it's the "Redmond Mom & Pop Commlink" that the locals prefer, because Redmon Mom & Pop is a local corporation aware of the market's needs and that comes out with a better product. Sure, I know, it's Shadowrun and Ares would find this corps and obliterate it, but at some point it become naive to think the megas can control EVERYTHING. Sometimes, there is room for the little guy.



Plenty of examples of this right now. Slums in Rio, South American countries, or many African countries. Hell, Detroit is starting to look like this. It's happening right now. And in 2070, it's not that The Man is unable to police these areas. It's that He doesn't care to. His arrogance has made him think these little fucks don't pose a threat to the real people. But they sure scare those ladder-climbing fucks back into their place when you threaten to take their jobs away.

You're right regarding corps and cheap products. The question there is one of economics. Is it more profitable to sell to 100 people at $1,000 a pop, or to 1,000 people at $100 a pop? Depends on a lot of factors. These people on the bottom of the stack are still going to be buying food, firearms, liquor and entertainment, so I assume there are super-cheap versions of all of those. If you think commlinks would be considered a necessity, I'd make sure there are super-cheap commlinks about. Non-necessities generally charge a hefty chunk above. Even though a luxury car costs almost the same to produce as an economy car, it costs two to three times as much, because they can make more money selling to a limited audience like that (and for a while in the US there really was no 'economy car' - they didn't think they'd make money selling like that).

As for the entrepeneur... Anyone making money in the hood is exploiting a niche that local gang could be occupying. If the entrepeneur pays his protection money, he's technically supporting the gang, and part of the gang's community. If he doesn't, he's going to get his head kicked in, unless he has a group of armed fellows to protect him. At that point HE'S a gang. The gang is the most effective model for economic and political effectiveness in a super-localized, law-free setting.

That's true. Only now there have been serious efforts on local governments to stop the drug dealers and crimes on Rio's favelas. The thing is, many of the previous administrations only made a fake effort to prevent this because they could use the people in the favelas as voters for them. Frek, one of the present city councilors is a drug dealer...

The crook may be the lesser evil.

There is a truely good novel that looks at the economies outside the normal cash system that could spring up at the fringes of a collapsing America. The book is "Distraction", don't remember the author though.

They had gangs that ran their economies on reputation that was stored and evaluated on a ditributed network run from the gang's vehicles. The more good feedback you got from your neighbors for stuff you did, the more pull you had in the gang. It was very sideways and non-capitalist.

And this had one of the best reasons I have seen for economic collapse, the Chinese just refused to acknowledge any intellectual property rights in English. They just remade and resold everything for less.

Everyone pays up. If he wasn't paying the gang, he'd be paying taxes to the government. Everyone pays something to someone. I wouldn't see someone paying protection as part of the gang. It's just that when there is no centralized authority, there is decentralized authority - but there is authority nonetheless. Human nature.

I suppose then we're arguing semantics I consider paying protection money to the gang being an outer circle participant in the gang, the same way that paying taxes to the government, in a way, makes you an American.

But yes, there should be some small-time entrepeneurs, who in turn are deciding which poor people are too poor for his product, and which poor people have enough material wealth. It goes all the way down.