Corps are bad. You want to stop them. Curtail their influence, reverse the impact of their greed on Earth, or you just wanna get even with them for what they've done to you. Whatever.

You are, obviously, one person in the Sixth World. What do you do?

Do you enlist people to your cause? Do you build a network of like-minded and bloody handed individuals? Do you go at it alone?

Go back in time 65 years and blow shit up. ;p

You cannot fight the System. The System always wins. The corps are just a series of people who are following the path of least resistance. In this case the path of least resistance is evil. If you blow them all up, tomorrow they will just be replaced by a number of equally well meaning people who will fall into the power vacuum.

The only way to beat the System is to remove yourself from the equation. Move to Alaska or some other remote part of the world and live the life you choose there.

I tried that. They built a bridge I didn't want, so I could drive a car I down own across it in order to get to the airport I don't need.
</bridge to nowhere, Alaska>

How would I bring down the corps?

Easy. I wouldn't. The first part of Fortinbras' post pretty much covers the why, though I'd add that the replacements can possibly be even worse than those you just took out. Best to deal with the evil you know than a potentially worse evil that can come to replace it.

You don't. You'd have to bring down civilization itself. Easiest way to do that I can think of is to go Fight Club on them and figure out a way to cause crash 3.0 in such a way that it irrevocably destroys everyone's SINs and credit histories.

Otherwise, you're going to have to go out and actively encourage bug spirits and actively aid them in consuming all of metahumanity. Of course, most of the hive-based ones are going to end up forming corporations of a sort anyway.

Easy, i would use the story i would have used to do the SR3/SR4 Matrix 1.0/Matrix 2.0 Transition.
Get the Heir of MicroDeck(Pseudo-Otaku/Technomancer) to make some trips into the systems of no less than 3, better 5/7/9(to your liking) of the Big 10 corporations.
Have him wreak some major havoc in there, leave traces in 2/4/6/8 of the 3/5/7/9(to your liking) pointing to the other 2/4/6/8/10(to your liking) and then leave traces pointing at the 3rd/5th/7th/9th and then finally at the 3rd/5th/7th/9th leave traces pointing at the tenth and THERE leave traces pointing at MicroDeck.
Stock up on Weapon and Matrix Offense/Defense-Corporation Stock. Move somewhere out of the line of fire and watch the fireworks fly in an more or less all out corp war.

Bit of a Xanathos Gambit, i will admit. And it needs a magnificent bastard to pull off effectively too . .
Yes, this was when MS killed the old SRO and decided to do their shooter nonsense, why do you ask?

As Stahlseele mentioned, but this alone might not work. The all out war would have to threaten to destabilize things to the point that the governments (and the destruction of the Gemeinschaft Bank ) force the revocation of extra-territorial status and reinstate government regulations and laws. This, coupled with a powerful public (non corporate of course) speaker to nudge the pissed off masses in the desired direction, this MIGHT, and I stress might bring corps back to the power they currently have.

Blow up the earth. That should take care of them.

Bye
Thanee

Either by bringing about the end of the world (horrors, shedim, massed nukes, zerg rush. Your choice), or by coordinating it so that in the case I manage to take all of the big 10 (and probably most of in not all AAs as well) down, the power vacuum will have to be filled with a large quantity of lesser players. If done quickly enough, this should hopefully give the various governments enough breathing room to roll back all extraterritoriality, which will severely diminish corporate influence.
Under the assumption that the world won't end, and the option for extraterritoriality remains, the status quo will remain largely the same, as fully independent corporations can apply much more pressure against the world.

Well, you'd have to remove the Cyberpunk from Shadowrun to do it...

Step 1: Stop playing Shadowrun and start playing Exalted (2nd ed, no 2.5 or EX3) in the Sixth World.
Step 2: Exalt as a Night Caste Solar. (Alternatively a Day Caste Abyssal will work; probably also some flavor of Infernal, but I'm partial to Solars.)
Step 3: Get myself a good Paranoia Combo. A 2/7 Filter is mandatory, as are Shaping defenses.
Step 4: Roam the world as an invincible golden murderhobo, vanishing into the sprawls so perfectly that no amount of RFID chips, spirits, sprites or Dragons can track me. Gain massive amounts of XP and nuyen.
Step 5: Begin assassinating major powers. Start with the Emperor of Japan and the CEO of all the Japanacorps, then take a sharp right through Lofwyr's brain to show the world that the Great Dragons are no longer the invincible creatures they were believed to be.
Step 6: Vanish for more murderhobo antics, gain more XP, start using social charms to disrupt and collapse the natural order of things.
Step 7: Set up a new world order with me on top.

To genuinely bring down the corps? Pretty much nothing, realistically. It's like one person wanting to "bring down" every real-life superpower, destroy every major nation, curtail the influence of every member of the UN and every major corporation all at once, etc, etc.

To really make a go of it in the Sixth World? ? To try to sting them a little bit, to get them out of any one neighborhood, to make your disdain known? Read a few manifestos and how-to books on guerrilla warfare and insurgencies, and go to town. Assassination campaigns, fundraising from like-minded individuals willing to risk a megacorp's wrath, hit-and-run fighting, blending into the local populace, hardening your heart against the inevitable civilian retaliations, and trying to make it a few months before the commandos come and get you.

That's about it. There are a handful of groups already trying this sort of thing, though. The most recent publication to deal with them heavily would be Loose Alliances, off the top of my head. Neo-Anarchists, that sort of thing. But, well, it's been clear from day one that none of them are actually working. They're doing their thing, but none can make real progress; it's just the nature of the setting and the odds stacked against them.

Wiht most government being fairly thoroughly bought, you'll need to take them down too. which means you're going to leave the ground to organized crime types, gangs and other warlords in a somalia-style mess which would make a Lagos resident feel right at home. Not sure it's much of an improvement.

"First, we must destroy civilization... All of it."

Why stop there? Let's wipe out all life and start again!

I've been known to suggest that it's time for the Cockroaches to have their shot a time or two.

Meh, if the roaches survive then we've obviously not been thorough enough!

Well, re-re-re-reading Shadowrun history, the Shiawase decision came about after a botched attack at a private nuclear facility to power Shiawase's needs. A government agency sued that they were lax in their security, Shiawase points out that their hands were tied, and thus extraterritoriality for corporations was born.

It smacks of a shadowrun to me.

So why not a reverse-Shiawase decision? What could be large enough to sway public or private opinion against corp extraterritoriality? What do you offer impotent governments as an excuse or an incentive to start whittling away at corp rights?

Some of the thought process is even if governments want to start whittling away at this point the corps would just say "Nah, we're cool" and that'd be that. By and large we're past the point of the governments being able to take things in mass from the corps. Sure certain governments like UCAS are big enough that they'd be more trouble to tangle with then their worth, but as a whole the governments still exist because it's a better deal for the corps then if they don't.

Basically the bell can't be unrung, and further even if you could unring it the system is so prevalent that for the vast majority of (corporate) citizens they don't want to go back.

In order to see a real sea change moment you'd need almost a utopia government, a digital democracy set up with enough space to mostly self sustaining and a strong enough bargaining chip to keep the corps from smothering it in it's crib, then with time it could start to weaken the perceptions, but yea until then forget it.

Really, what you'd have to do is convince the right people and organizations that the corporations are a danger to them. You'd need a popular revolution, probably, because the various national governments aren't strong enough to really do anything, even as a coalition. Even then it'd be a very slow and painful process, with lots of lives ruined or lost for very little relative change until the entire thing toppled to the ground, and then you'd have a mighty painful time rebuilding everything.

You'd also have to turn the corps against one another, because as cutthroat and competitive as they are, they would probably join together in the common interest of self preservation if they weren't already highly inclined to gut each other no matter the cost.

~Umi

Would it be possible to weaken one of the Big Ten and focus everyone's attention on bringing them down. Keep the corps busy amongst themselves as they fight to devour chunks of it.

Ares at the moment fits the bill. Their new "Excalibur" battle rifle apparently lost them some market share. It's not enough to undo Ares' influence, but suppose there's massive public outcry about the Bugs?

Suppose that there are some Bugged-up executives as well? (Purposefully "invested" by yourself). That will provides enough of a pretext to start hacking the corp apart. Governments will express outrage, politicians will fire up the masses, corps will howl and distance themselves from Ares while they start to maneuver to gobble it up. One corp takes the lead, say MCT.

Then, engineer a tragedy. Say MCT is really being bloody about all its hostile takeovers, and there's a particularly nasty one where MCT claims there was a bug nest at an arcology. It's a massacre, but in the aftermath some of MCT's soldiers' bodies were retrieved: it looks like they were invested with Bugs of their own. Suddenly, the corps' sham is too much to bear. Public anger and disgust turn against the corps as a whole. Ares and MCT citizens flee their parent corps.

It's Corp War II with the corps fighting it out as the governments eke some power back. It won't end them once and for all, that's not the point. Just curb their influence.

Imagine the chaos in Seattle (or any Knight Errant "protected" city) when some KE higher-ups are revealed as bug hosts. Greed, fear, and opportunism can change the world.

(Just to be clear, I'm not against the corps in the game. I like their level of evil in Shadowrun. This is just for fun, to see if an approach is plausible and possible.)

To be honest, I think the fastest way the corps would fall would be if the Dragons wanted the corps to fall. Not likely, but hey.

~Umi

Initiate a world war featuring corps on one side and governments on the other. Simply revoking extraterritoriality by one government is insufficient to reverse the power because the corps have utilized it to build up their own paramilitary forces. So if you revoke it you need to force necessary to enforce it. If one government remove extraterritoriality you can be assured there will be a retaliatory strike by the corps because once one nation sets the precedent, other will be inclined to follow. I doubt any single nation is capable of directly taking on all 10 megas plus whatever AAs wanted to join in and emerge victorious.

I hope not. If the lizards pitch that fight they should get roasted. If not, at that point we could change the name to Magicrun, or Earthrun 2070 edition.

*points at lofwyr*
He is both a GD AND has the biggest corp under him.
He could take on one, maybe two other corps at once.
If he made a pact with the south american non Aztech Dragons, he could liberate Aztlan for example.
Or if he asked aden/sirrurg if he wanted some help slaying the rest of the djihad for example.

I don't think Lofwyr could take Aztechnology on his own, not even with Saeder-Krupp. If he made a deal with the Amazonians, then the Horizon headlines just print themselves; Lofwyr and Sirrug the Destroyer in alliance to murder every living human, in Aztlan, footage at five.


At that point, Aztechnology suddenly finds that as bad as they may be, they have no shortage of allies in fighting off unmitigated Draconian aggression.



And frankly, if it comes down to an all-or-nothing species war, humans versus dragons, Dragons will lose hardest. It won't be pretty, it won't be nice, it will likely mean the end of civilization on Earth as we know it (which would, incidentally, also mean the end of megacorps,) but it will settle once and for all the question of who is the dominant species on the planet. (Hint: it's metahumanity.)


[e]I was going to edit this and erase the comma after "every living human," but on second thought, I think it would probably be even more propagantastic if it gets left in, the way the news anchor reads it.

Shadowrun is cyberpunk (originally, at least). You can't fight the corporations in Shadowrun because it's a fictional universe that runs on tropes of genre fiction. And all-powerful, evil corps are one such trope.

Thus, the corps are (barring a publisher-induced shakeup) eternal and unchanging. They're the Elder Gods of the Sixth World. You can't kill Cthulhu, you can't fight Renraku.

Which is fine, for the game. Just accept that the game universe doesn't represent reality, and don't worry about it.

Somebody did kill Hastur, though.


The Sixth World doesn't stop being the Sixth World if the megacorporate system falls. It gets completely rearranged, and it may get to a state where the traditional heist-style Shadowrun game is exceedingly unlikely, but you can, if you so desire, run other kinds of stories in such a world.

Corps only go at other corps for two reasons:

1. To save face/cause disgrace (aka PR).
2. It makes them money.

They do not get into vendettas and do not go off half cocked.

Hastur isn't that scary if you awaken him early.
</arkham horror>

If the sociopaths on 4chan believe it...seems legit.

As GM, you can do anything you want in your own campaign. The points I made are still valid: the corps exist because they're a cyberpunk trope, and (in the official material) they're not going anywhere. Not because it's realistic, but because that's the genre of the game.

Well as I've stated above, i believe it is perfectly realistic that the corps by this point are around to stay. In a couple more generations of game time it will be even more so. To your average sixth worlder going back to national governments is like suggesting to your average person in a democratic country that monarchy should be restored.

Isn't one of the tropes of cyberpunk to fight the grand and evil corporations? Usually in a futile manner.

Again, this is an exercise in creative thought. No one's campaigning for their removal, no one's hating on them. The subline says "A thought exercise" after all.



Except that there are still national governments. They have vastly less power than before. And there are conspiracies around to restore the good ol' USA, of which Kay St. Irregular may be a member of.

Get over the whole "it can't be done". The whole point of a "what if" is to explore the "if".

Hmm, massive use of WMD and EMP and viruses. BTW--isn't this what Winternight did in 2063?

Let's start with something: wouldn't have happened in the first place. Supreme Court decisions don't come out of nowhere, and there would have been some necessary antecedent decisions or articles in legal journals. (We're talking the US Supreme Court, here, not the legal system of other countries.) Legal journals are the seed for later court decisions, lawyers cite case law and argue why something could or shouldn't be Constitutional. Eventually, members of the Supreme Court read those articles and decide to adopt those legal theories. (Look up "Incorporation", vis a vis the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment.)

But right now, no one is arguing for business extraterritoriality, no sane person would suggest it, and under the Court as constituted during the last half-century, they could never find 5 votes for it.

Legally speaking, extraterritoriality for organizations is nonsensical. Territory belongs to nations. Organizations can own property, including land, but that doesn't give them sovereign rights over that terrain. The entire basis for diplomacy and sovereignty since the 1500's has been the nation-state system, and under that system a corporation can't be a sovereign entity.

The Supreme Court decision says, in effect "this company is now a country, just like the United States". That makes no sense, and violates 500 years of "international laws". Companies can't be countries.

Nations fight over terrain, quite bitterly. WWII. Palestine. First Persian Gulf War.

What nation, anywhere, would voluntarily allow its territory to be annexed by a separate country at will, simply by that foreign country buying land from a private citizen? No nation would want to do that, no nation would allow it.

Suppose the Supreme Court handed down such a decision. The other branches of government would fight against it, and could easily do so.

It would be instantly obviated by Congress passing a law that simply says "no more corporations". To incorporate, you have to file papers and be granted that status. And if corporations must have sovereignty, but there's no more corporations, then there's no problem.

Congress would do that in a second. They could even bypass the decision, and allow business entities to function by inventing a new category, a new term instead of "corporations", and even if they're functionally the same as a corporation, they're technically not so the Supreme Court decision is obviated.

And that's not even counting the mass public rage such a decision would cause. In such a case, the President could face down the Court, and order the decision to be ignored. The Supreme Court has power, only because people accept its decisions. (See the political science term "legitimacy".)

In this case, this decision would be so controversial, that Right, Left, and Libertarians would oppose it, allowing the president to (in effect) annul the decision. It would be a Constitutional Crisis, but that's happened before. And if the President wins, and the Federal Government and Congress follow his lead, the decision would be overturned.

(This mirrors how the Supreme Court gained the power of Judicial Review, in Marbury vs. Madison, and would set a precedent for the President and Congress, acting together, being able to over-ride decisions of the Supreme Court. That would be a huge change to the US legal landscape.)

Ignore all that. Assume the US is wholly insane, and this becomes the law of the land. Why would any other country go along? I really don't see why Europe would accept this idea. Or any other country, for that matter. It's a genuinely stupid idea, one which would lead to all sorts of problems (nations can't tax each other, corporate nations couldn't be taxed), and even my lowest opinion of Europeans doesn't allow for them following the US off a cliff in this manner.

Like I said, it's a trope so it just is. But it would never happen in the US, and if it did it wouldn't be adopted worldwide, and if it were the corporations (as depicted in Shadowrun material) would go out of business. The "problem" would solve itself.

In a world where there is magic, dragons and the Internet can kill you, I think we can let extraterritoriality slide. It's the future according to the 80's.

Also remember, the American political system, judiciary precedent, international law, etc, etc, weren't necessarily all exactly like they were in real life, leading up to the Shiawase Decision. What doesn't make sense in real life may have made perfect sense in Shadowrun's world -- to them it might have made every bit as much sense as the Supreme Court's fairly recent ruling that companies count as "people" and so have Freedom of Speech, for instance.

And that's not what it says. Extraterritoriality and sovereignty are two different things. Extraterritoriality is an exemption from local law, but it can always be revoked by the host nation. Sovereignty, by definition, cannot be revoked by any other entity. The legal concept of extraterritoriality was invented to suspend local law without alienating a part of the territory. The United Nations, NATO or the European Central Bank are organizations, not countries, they do not possess territory, they are not sovereign, but can and do benefit from extraterritoriality.

It stays that something like the Shiwase decision is very unlikely to ever come out from the US Supreme Court, but not on that ground.

That's exactly my point: it isn't realistic, we accept it for the sake of the game. And it offers a lot of advantages, in terms of gameply, not the least of which is allowing for Shadowrunners to exist at all. Without corporate extraterritoriality, they don't make any sense.


Then good worldbuilding would require those differences to be explained, and those differences would have consequences (which would make the setting look very different). As a trope, it just is. As a valid alternate history, it would require a lot more work and explication.

Which would, IMHO, undermine the setting. "It just is" is the easiest defense of the impossible.


But that example undermines your entire point. Corporations were first invented in Athens, in 200 BC. From the very beginning, they were "organizations that function as individuals". They can own property as an individual can, can hire and fire employees, can sue and be sued under the law as if they were individuals, can be cited and fined as if individuals, and have debts that adhere to them, and not the owners. Business enterprises, churches, and universities are all corporations.

The argument in that case (Citizens United, I'm assuming) is this: an organization is made of people, and you couldn't deprive a person of their free speech rights. No less so can you deprive a group of people of rights they would each individually hold and could each individually exercise.

The point is — and this is where your argument breaks down — that there is 2200 years of traditions, law, and common law supporting the decision. People argued for it in law journals and editorials, and political parties lined up for and against it. It may be a bad decision, it may cause harm, but it occurred for explicable and identifiable reasons.

No such reasons have been identified for corporate extraterritoriality. Individuals aren't sovereign nations, so why would a corporation be named as such?

It wouldn't. And it doesn't matter.

"Realism" in this point gives way to the needs of the game. We need Shadowrunners in Shadowrun. And having many different enclaves of separate "governments" in the same city makes Shadowrunners plausible, and makes a campaign setting like Seattle possible.

Which is a good thing (IMHO). Even if it isn't realistic.

The thing is, though, in Shadowrun, Extraterritoriality actually is sovereignty. The UCAS can't say "Ares, we've decided that your extraterritoriality is becoming burdensome, it's canceled on all facillities on our soil. You have ninety days to bring all operations into compliance with UCAS federal, state, and local laws, and you may file for extensions if need be on a case to case basis."


Also, extraterritoriality doesn't normally grant the right to start making your own laws, printing your own currency, or issuing your own documentation of citizenship - all of which the Megas do.


So, it's called extraterritoriality, but it's actually sovereignty.




And yeah, the Shiawase decision was retarded. If nuke plants ever became such a target, I'm sure federal law enforcement would be assigned to protect them. No need to hand over all the rights of nationhood to a company.

Except you set a what if with a stupidly narrow scope. Outside of a Dr. Manhattan style event one person doesn't overturn the will of literally millions of others.

You didn't really set a "what if" you set a "how could I?" and the answer that came back is alternatively "Insufficient vespene gas" or "Can't be done."

Let's be technical, and say that extraterritoriality has historically been the ceding or waiving of sovereignty by the host nation, to the persons or property of some other nation. (Embassies or diplomatic officials, for example.) Traditionally, the extraterritorial piece of land is considered part of some other country. That other country gains the sovereignty ceded by the host nation.

Extraterritoriality is sovereignty, for it to have any meaning. If you decide what the laws are on your own piece of land, and administer those laws as you see fit, that's sovereignty, by the legal definition of the term. If you can raise armies, conduct diplomacy, and otherwise control your own territory, that is sovereignty. You are acting like a nation-state. And that's what the corps were given in the US (and later, the UCAS).

I stipulate that, in the material as given, other countries can (and do) kick out corporations. Tir Tairngire, for example. But the UCAS can't, because of Judicial Fiat. Not "at will", not at all. Not unless the Supreme Court decision is reconsidered or overturned. (Which it would be, sooner or later, IMHO.)


War and conquest. Treaties. Countries combining. (How much "sovereignty" does South Vietnam or East Germany have? Precisely none.) A decision by the nations of the world to ignore sovereignty. (Taiwan.)

Diplomatic recognition of a government is a granting of sovereignty and revoking that recognition (in the case of an illegitimate government gaining power) is possible. The international community can grant and revoke sovereignty.


Not as it functions in Shadowrun, at least in the purest form, in the UCAS.

But even should I grant all your arguments, it runs into the same believability problems. Who would do such a thing and why? It makes no sense.


There are no NATO bases that are extraterritorial. (Or even "NATO bases", that I know of. NATO forces belong to specific countries, countries with mutual defense treaties, and by agreement among those countries operate jointly. Some of the time.) There is one specific NATO building, in Belgium, but I find nothing that says it's extraterritorial. NATO, as an entity, isn't sovereign. It has the authority that member states grant it and accept at any given time. It isn't extraterritorial.

The United Nations is a diplomatic organization, and functions under the rules for international diplomacy. Embassies are sovereign and extraterritorial. They are immune to the laws of the host country, by agreement between the countries, and they can only be returned to native jurisdiction if diplomatic relations are severed (officially or unofficially).

The ECB might be an exception, I know nothing of it and therefore I can't opine on it.

Since apparently it isn't apparent, let me rephrase my OP: "If it were possible to overturn the corps, how would you bring the corps down?"

Is that better? Did anyone really need me to spell out the theoretical prerequisite? It's like me asking "What shape would you bend metal with your hands?" and you reply back with "I can't bend metal". Only this should have been even more obvious.

And we have that guy up there who's stuck in what can and can't happen. Wow, flex a little.

As often comes up the internet, and seemingly disproportionately so on RPG boards, asking a question and then getting an answer you don't like isn't the person who answers the question's fault.

Basically, if you don't like peoples answers that's fine but control your hurt feelings.

Your comparison isn't quite apt. You aren't just saying "if it were possible to overturn the corps, how would you bring the corps down?" That's not what was in the OP. The OP, in fact, clearly states that in this hypothetical you're just one person.

If you find it so unrealistic, then No Prize it. Come up with a valid reason for it to exist. The game presumes you are a creative and interesting person, so invent a scenario in which it is possible.
In a Citizens United world, I find extraterritoriality to be the next logical step. I, in my own personal and irrelevant opinion, find your legal argument against why extraterritoriality would be possible to be flawed, so in my world I need no further explanation.

If you do, then invent one. You're a smart guy with cool ideas. Set those ideas to work for the setting rather than against it. Come up with a reason why extraterritoriality is possible and make that the reason it exists in Shadowrun.
Anyone can sit on the sidelines and point out flaws in things, but it takes some real thinking to create a scenario to explain it. So do that.
No Prize it!

If you insist...I would build a corp of my own, Gordon Gekko style, and try to take them apart piece by piece. Undercut them in the market place, take huge losses on credit until I had enough market share to start making a profit. I'd buy up as much private stock of the corps as I could using espionage and double dealing until I could perform a hostile takeover. Tarnish their brand name. That sort of thing.

Step one: Be Art Dankwalther.

Step two: Don't get hit by the Thor Shot.