CanRay comments in post about Day Jobs

"With bank transfers being the preferred method of paying for items, this brings up some questions..."

"Why does Stuffer Shack need a staff?"

"And what the hell do you hold it up for?"


Got me thinking....

With everything being wireless how do the bums survive?

-I imagine a squatter with an old Metalink. The bum's PAN has an AR window pop up asking for spare change. The AR window is a virtual Cardboard sign, with a cup for online transfers.

Would it be near impossible to get away with robbing someone at gunpoint? All the funds are virtual and can be traced. How does someone get away with it?

Appreciate any comments.

Thanks

You don't rob people for their money any more (unless you're in an area that might still have lots of corp scrip lying around), you rob them for their things.

Even as far back as the original Food Fight scenario, they pointed out that the Chiller Thrillers were going to "steal commodities and valuables like food, weapons, and gold fillings," instead of cash, and that they were going to "load up on stuffers," but also "be looking for anything of value the customers have.

I just give bums food, bottled water, and directions to the nearest shelter, even today. I frequently don't carry cash but I usually have bottled water and I can take the guy into a place and buy him a bite and just talk for a bit.

And agreed, if I'm gonna beat up someone and take something, it's probably their things I'm taking.

Well, as Tamamous is fond of saying, it's what's inside that counts.

That is Hilarious

I chuckled.

Oh, i can hear it now.. "Why TamamousDating.com? because we here at TamamousDating believe, its what's on the inside that counts, not some scientific method to finding love..."

Well, something similar is already available IRL

"We just need your turn ons and turn offs, your horoscope sign, and your date of birth, please. Oh, and your blood type."

Tamamous: Finding the perfect someone to give your heart to. Forever.

Well someone has to stock shelves,mop the floor,chase out loiters and bitch about how their not even suppose to be here today. Sure drone could do most of these jobs but humans are cheaper require less maintenance.

Damn good question, actually. If you can afford a commlink for me to ping Nuyen too, you don't really need to be begging, do you?

Not really. The cheapest com you can get is $200 (100 for the link and 100 for the OS).
I know people today who can't afford rent on a cheap apartment, but still have a laptop.

Note that a cardboard sign would be a LOT more effective.

In order to see the AR window you have to be running in active mode AND have your commlink hooked up to your visual displays. Anyone running passive, hidden, or not wearing goggles/glasses/etc. or anyone who simply has their cybereyes/goggles/glasses/etc not displaying AR isn't going to see the sign.

Well, keep in mind that in the fluff apparently most people would still see the "sign," since it's mostly paranoid shadowrunner types or the occasional grouch who's got their stuff turned off. Whole chunks of the canon advertisement/social media world wouldn't work it everyone walked around with their electronics toned down.

A back-up piece of actual cardboard might not be a terrible idea, but it comes down to just how "cyber" and dystopic your setting is. Maybe cardboard's cheaply made and doesn't last long in our throw-away society, maybe cardboard signs wouldn't work because poor are so used to icons they can't write in order to beg, maybe wasting perfectly good insulation-cardboard on a sign means that sliver of warmth between life and death, maybe cardboard's organic enough folks let the rain soften it up and eat it, who knows?

Either way, I don't imagine a bum with a cheap, beat-up, old commlink to be any more ridiculous than the ones you see in real life, who jabber on cell phones or smoke cigarettes while begging.

Yeah, we've recently discussed that, too.
Buying used and/or counterfeit may make the price even lower; so even a bum is able to afford a 'link.

Now, the places you're likely to meet a bum to begin with do not only use cred, but barter, token money and corp scrip in cash, as well, you'd think.

That is so wrong I LMAO.

True, they probably would.

Are they actually begging on the streets, though? If they had their laptop with them, I wouldn't be inclined to give them money. I don't know, maybe that makes me a bad person. : )

Oh, I comment far more than that.

Anyhow, it's come up a few times in the fluff that electronic currency is making things harder for the SINless to make an honest . In order to properly work a commlink and have a bank account, you need a SIN, after all. No SIN, no Matrix Service Provider, either, remember?

Now, there are still alternatives: There is still hard currency in some countries. The UCAS and the CAS still has the Dollar, Quebec (F*** the accente egout or whatever is supposed to go there!) still has the Franc, and England still has the Pound (Being confused by metric currency according to Sir PTerry.).

Certified Credsticks are still around, and some cruddy old copies held in the hands of bums would allow for stick-to-stick transfers no problem. I doubt they'd allow people to take them to slot into a CommLink, however (IIRC, CommLinks have a Credstick slot.).

Finally, there's what I called the "Burned SIN Recycling System", where people in the Shadow Businesses drop their burnt and broken SINs onto the cheapest CommLink they can get, put some cred on it to sweeten the pot, and find a passed out bum that matches close enough to themselves to drop it on ("He's an Ork, we all look alike to breeders anyhow.").

The reality is that most are in very dire straights, relying on handouts... And, after what happened with the Universal Brotherhood...

I did have an idea for, once my character has enough wealth to start a company, to hire SINless as a cheap workforce in exchange for some minor training, familial benefits, and promise of a SIN down the line. How feasible do you think it would be to start such a project up (in the 2070's, not today)?

The feasibility of that sort of scheme is entirely between your GM and how much down time crap he wants going on. If all he's after is a straightforward gutter-scum game, one of you suddenly trying to start up a semi-legit company on the side is probably not going to go over well (and maybe the mob or someone squeezes you, because if it was a great idea organized crime would've already done it).

If he's doing a lot more sandbox type game and thinks it's a cool idea, it'll go over a lot more smoothly, and he'll tweak his game world to make it all make sense.

A legal company can't use SINless (Can't tax them after all. The rare SIN handouts by the Government and Military Service seem to be the only way to get one legitimately.). But a semi-criminal enterprise doing sweatshop labor that pays (drek) cash or goods for work, easily done. Up to the GM how much extra he wants going on, however.

Then again, the Shadowskool would count as this as well, wouldn't it?

Either way, more likely to be targets, hirers, or contacts than something the PCs would set up. Too much to lose if the fertilizer hits the ventilator...

P.I.s do it, C.S.I.s do it, and bums have been doing it long before either of the first two existed. Dumpster Diving.

You'd be amazed at what some people throw away.

Well, CanRay, first, you don't really need an MSP with WMI. Second, you can get a legal SIN at any time, remember? Seems to be the new thing in 4th edition...

There is a new-ish movement based on that, which gained popularity with the worsening economic system the last couple years. In a report I saw on it, especially in large cities (New York, for example), people can actually be picky about what they eat of the garbage.

No SIN, where do they send the bill? How do they pay the tax for the services? How do they track the person's surfing and shopping habits to sell to businesses? Black MSPs don't need a SIN, legit ones do, and Black MSPs cost. (I think WMI MSP services are in Unwired.).

As for SINs handed out willy-nilly? Where do you see that? There was a SIN Amnesty that lasted a far too short period of time, but that's all I can think of. It likely wasn't reported quickly enough for the homeless and completely destitute to get SINs, however.

I've likened it to a way to get political "Local Carpet Baggers", various PoliClubs ensured that "Their" SINless got SINs while the "Unwanted, Unwashed Masses" got to meet up with the more militant branches a few blocks away from the SIN Offices. Considering the whole chaos still going down when the amnesty happened, the police (If they were so inclined to give a devil rat's hoop) were too busy anyhow. So you had the Humanis Policlub loading up rented school buses full of humans to get SINs while their White Sheeted Brethren were in Metahuman neighborhoods ensuring "The Heathens" didn't get citizenship. MOM and The Sons of Sauron were probably doing the same. Just the way I view it.
New-ish is right. Repairing and rebuilding for resale from dumpster diving has been going on for quite some time now.

Not to mention junk yards.

The Bum could have a Criminal SIN.

Yeah, wrong kind of SIN. Unless you had a legitimate SIN before, a Criminal SIN just means that you're a Probationary Citizen with a criminal record. (In the UCAS at least. In other countries, they just shoot you and leave you in the street, as you're a non-citizen anyhow, and the worst that can happen is "Discharge of a firearm within city limits.").

But drones add to the great chain of life! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt1W0F0yObg&t=6s







-k

SR4A pg 41

Now he has a SIN and it explains why he's a bum.

------------

Sins handed out "Willy-nilly".

SR4A pg 266

In short, if you're SINless and a company wants to hire you they should be able to get a SIN for you with you being a probationary citizen (same page) until the paperwork is complete.

But someone with a Criminal SIN can still have a bank account right?

You mean like these kinds of drones?If they had a legitimate SIN before, yeah, but it'd be monitored more closely.

SINless before? Why bother? He's only going to use it for criminal purposes anyhow.

I was actually refering to Freegans, who peruse roadside garbage for throwaways, especially from food establishments, and make use of the waste. There are defenitely also people who take junk and either re-sell it, or reuse it in another way, but that has been a staple of the poor, desperate, and cheap for a very long time (before there was public waste workers)

But are there still taxes? If an Ares citizen lives in an Ares condo, he is an Ares resident, right? So he should not own any tax to UCAS. Ares themselves might still pay taxes, but they call it outsourcing unprofitable business

Legal SINs cost money, usually more than the uncared for masses can afford. I also don't see what sort of problem organized crime would see in such a "charity," especially when you consider it gives them a way to harvest/launder SINs. I never said this would be a means to stop running, nor did I say it would not be an accessory to running...

You still don't have to have a SIN if you're a bum. You got your dumpster commlink, a basic credstick (which a veteran SR player, since SR 1, has described as being very common), and set the commlink to to automatically transmit funds to and from any credstick you've got plugged into it (paranoid about hackers? quickly plug in the credstick just before a transfer, and yank it out when it's done) instead of an online bank account.

On top of that, thinking about it now, you don't even need the commlink if all the low end food joints have credstick readers.

Well, the bit about SINs being readily available for anyone comes from Core AE, p.41 and p.266.
But where does it say that you have to pay for one? Fake SINs - sure, those cost money. But an actual legal one?

Also, apropos to MSPs - Unwired says you can not have one, if you don't want to, I believe. At the very basis of the WMI lies the idea of a mesh network, one that is online as long as there are devices online to retransmit the message between each other. Yeah, you won't have a mail or a commcode, but those are not the things you need as a bum that much anyway.

You're neglecting the cost of paperwork and bureaucracy. This, coupled with the need for some sort of proof of history would make it problematic. By providing work and legitimacy, you help the needy, and by teaming with organized crime, you ironically provide the government with proof that your safety measures to prevent criminal exploitation are effective!

SR4 Pg 41. See above.
Unwired, Pg 11 "A lot of stores don’t even carry credstick readers anymore."

There are taxes for Ares Citizens, and they go to Ares Macrotechnology to improve infrastructure and public services that each employee enjoys, such as firing ranges for ages six and up!

You're kind of place?

Well, those stores are losing on bum clientèle.

What I was thinking. Money is money, anything for a profit.

Now in the cleaner part of town, where the polite wageslaves live and work like the good little sheep they are, a credstick reader is likely harder to find (why need a credstick if you're a legal citizen doing nothing but legal business?). But then, a bum is probably going to be just as hard to find as well.

In some ways. But I'm a loyal servant to the Crown and would hate the remainder of Ares brainwash... I mean, edu-tainment. Mom, Apple Pie, Damien Knight wrapped in the Ares Flag (And hopefully pants under that.).

Hopefully NOT. Yum.

As noted a dozen posts or so back, some people do still use cash. I'd wager that there's always going to be a sall segment of the population that just refuses to give up on the old things in favor of the new ... see also, the USA's ongoing battle to move from dollar bills to dollar coins. Today, debit-credit cards are the norm to such a degree that many don't carry cash, but, if you hit the outlying society, you'll find a group that flat-out doesn't trust banks, so keeps theirmoney on their person at all times, while others who can't get a bank (Due to not being in an area legally) and are thus forced to a cash-only lifestyle. Heck, I run a register myself, and we still get people using checks. Now, while I expect *those* to be dead by 2070, cash is still cash, and you're bound to see it in use.

As a rule of thumb, anywhere 'modern' will handle wirelss transmission and have one register somewhere that can still handle credsticks, while 'cutting edge' areas will be wireless only. Once you get to 'poor' sections, cash will be accepted, while in collapsed areas (Barrens, etc), cash will be the norm, since wireless networks are rare and there are gobs of SINless folks around. Since the middle class are the people least likely to carry cash (Out of the spectrum that a bum could reasonable expect to encounter), they're in for a tough time. (Properly distopian for Shadowrun, mind you) ... that means that most are off the streets in the good parts of town (Lone Star rounds 'em up, roughs 'em up, and kicks 'em out someplace... not even worth the effort of arresting!) but are common in poor areas, where cash still exists.

...

I'm rambling, aren't I?

I think that Script is really common for low income people who HAVE a job, but aren't corporate citizens. Script is also probably how Shadowrunners get paid, or it hell should be. is traceable. Paper script can be exchanged through many hoops, to end up with nice safe money. It's just easier to 'obfuscate that' and talk about nuyen prices for everything.

Even in SR at 2070 there are places that use script, like the Chicago Containment Zone. And I wouldn't expect script to be something limited to the lower classes and the SINless. Even in present days there are people who will bitch and complain about not having any money, yet pull the latest model smartphone out of their pocket to surf the internet or update their facebook account right there on the spot.

As for shadowrunner pay, that's what credsticks are for. Transfer your pay to a credstick, shift it to another credstick, then back to an account (not necessarily the first one that originally got paid) and you're pretty much set. Won't obliterate a trail entirely, but can make it so bloody hard that most won't try.

Except that it's basically impossible to create a system where credsticks are effectively bearer bonds, and have electronic money where noone has a clue where money X came from and where it went.

The idea that there's electronic money that is economically sound, and yet can be fooled by 2 money transfers across a credstick is so laughable as to break complete verisimilitude.