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Whose opinions matter to the megacorps?

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frederick.johansen

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« on: <03-08-18/1725:11> »
[My standard intro and disclaimer]
I have a few Shadowrun fluff questions.  I am running a 5th edition game with my girlfriend, best friend and his 20 year old son.  We've really enjoyed ourselves so far, and all of us love the Shadowrun game world.  Me being me however, there are some places where the story of Shadowrun just doesn't fit for me.  I'm not talking about whether various events are ethical or legal.  I realize it is fiction and I'm able to accept a fair amount with that in mind.  That stated there are still some elements that I need help wrapping my head around.

I have seen a wide variety of Shadowrun world questions answered with, "It is bad for PR."  For example,

Question: why don't megacorps harvest the organs of all the SINners in the various Barrens?
Answer: It is bad for PR.

What public are these public relations for?  It is stated over and over again that the public has no self determination, so why care what the public thinks?  The middle lifestyle and above metahumanity are all owned by the megacorps (directly or indirectly), and megacorp citizens won't question their own corp's actions and won't approve the actions of any other corp (regardless of what they do).  Everyone below middle lifestyle are too busy trying to get their next meal to be concerned with whether a particular megacorp commits genocide or the like.

Another bizzare one are mentions of the UN.  The UN was irrelevant in the 1980s, irrelevant now, and would be completely meaningless in a Shadowrun world.  National governments are largely powerless to control the megas, and the UN has less power than that.  Also, a diminished UCAS means the UN wouldn't be able to function anyway.  In a world of completely wrecked countries, whose going to bankroll the UN and staff the UN peacekeeping forces without payment?

So what PR?  If the answer offered is "Shadowrun is a dystopian dark black place", that's not an answer.  I'm looking for something I've missed, which I'm sure there must be.  I've done a fair amount of searching on this topic over the Internet but I'm keep finding the opposite of the answer I'm looking for: questions answered with "Megacorps don't care what anyone has to say about them."

   

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #1 on: <03-08-18/1735:31> »
Bad PR can result in lessened profits, which the Megas will care about.  Specifically, the execs who oversee the dip in profits and have to answer to the board/investors.

Additionally, while the UN is pointless the Corporate Court is not.  It's the true "World Government" even though it's not ostensibly calling itself such.  Now a AAA is defined by it having a say AT the Corp Court- but each of the ten megas only gets 1 of 10 votes at the Court.  The public opinion that actually, truly MATTERS is that of the other Megas.  Look at the Corp War (the death of Fuchi Industrial Electronics) to see what happens when the megas all agree to focus on one shared victim.  Wanton disregard for metahuman rights is one way to unite the other megas in the opinion that they'd all be better off if your assets were divvied up amongst them rather than remain in your mega's hands.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

frederick.johansen

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« Reply #2 on: <03-08-18/1751:31> »
So the Corporate Court enforces corporate social responsibility?  Oddly enough that fits with my thoughts on how the Shadowrun world can work but wasn't something I saw as represented in the canon.  I figured money was all that mattered to the megas.  Public opinion impacting profits requires customers that are able to make their own choices about how they spend their money, which wasn't what I have gotten from the material.  I thought everyone was so poor that whatever producer sold the products needed for survival the cheapest would be the one to sell to any particular metahuman, regardless of the behavior of the producer.  The desperately poor can't afford social outrage.  Or does the Corporate Court intervene in this element as well, somehow giving the masses the ability to make ethical buying decisions?  I am confused.   

Side note: either my glasses suck, or this captcha is just really hard.  ;-)

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #3 on: <03-08-18/1801:54> »
That's absolutely not how the Corporate Court works.

The Corporate Court exists because the megas have extraterritoriality and national and other megas' laws only apply to them when they want them to. In order for there to be a working global economy there needs to be SOME sort of authority to settle disputes, and that's the Corp Court.

What it literally is: a forum for the megas to politick each other to reach an agreed upon consensus.  If Renraku accuses Shiawase of stealing some Intellectual Property, the Corp Court is where it gets settled officially (assuming of course the matter isn't settled "in the shadows").  The Renraku and Shiawase Judges will obviously side with their corps' points of view, and the dispute will be settled instead by the remaining 8 megas.  And politics being what it is, each of those judges will vote as their respective megas tell them to.  And those 8 megas will tell their judges how to vote based on a combination of their own self-interest and how much the parties involved make it worth their while.  For example MCT may side with Renraku out of the principle that it doesn't want its own similar IPs infringed in similar ways in the future.  Shiawase may agree to give S-K a lucrative subsidiary they've been jockeying for in order to secure that mega's vote.  Etc.

So if a Mega goes off the reservation and begins acting in ways the other megas are not, it becomes easy for the other megas to all come to the conclusion to do something about that wayward mega.  Not because it's the "right" thing to do, but because it's one of the few ways to get them all to agree one specific thing is in all their own self interests.

Think of the Corp Court as a very potent sociological flywheel that serves to keep the Megas acting in conformity with the norms they've defined for themselves.  If they ALL decide "you know what? FRAG metahuman rights.  they have none!  World slavery for all the megas!" then there's nothing anyone else in the world can do to stop the 10 megas from doing that.  But if only one or some of the megas get crazy ideas, the rest bring them back to reality.
« Last Edit: <03-08-18/1806:29> by Stainless Steel Devil Rat »
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

SunRunner

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« Reply #4 on: <03-08-18/1921:07> »
Also remember you do still have Normal governments like the CAS and the UCAS, granted they are not the super powers of yor but if the AAA megas go to far off their rockers they will initiate military conflicts and it WILL be a significant problem for the AAAs if the UCAS of CAS said all out war on a corps assets located in their territory. Also you have several non AAA mega power blocks in the world such as the great dragons that if they speak up the AAA megas know they need to listen. The best example is when the great dragon went rouge in Aztlan a while back. The Azzies said F*** it were gonna Thorshot / nuke it from orbit to solve the problem and ALL of the great dragons informed them NO they were not as that would result in ALL of the great dragons declaring ALL out to the LAST man/woman/child warfare vs Aztlan if they did. They said you dont get to kill Great dragons, we acknowledge hes a problem and gone to far and we will handle him but you dont get to touch a scale on his head. The Azzies blinked and let the great dragons come in and handel the problem.

Red Herring

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« Reply #5 on: <03-09-18/0853:23> »
It is a common trap in Shadowrun to believe the UN and governments of the world are ineffectual. This isn't exactly true (and no I'm not even going to bring up superpowers like the Empire). First things first, corporations rarely wage open war. Rather they prefer quick engagements and skirmishes before going back to their business or steamrolling failed nation states in Africa and Asia since Shadowrun is basically Reverse History. There is a reason for this. The megacorporations care about one thing and one thing only, the bottom line. Governments have no such compunctions and are far more willing and able to wage traditional wars. The Azzies are a bit of an exception to this as they are both an extremely powerful nation and the second most powerful megacorporation on the planet. So in traditional military situations governments are still going to take center stage (looking at you Euro Wars).

But that's honestly an almost tangential fact. The more important one is that governments have a very easy method for putting megacorporations in their place when they need to (relatively speaking, contracts are a touchy matter). If a megacorporation is proving too much of a nuisance a government could potentially just switch to a competing corporation and if one things gets the corps' notice it's losing money. This is also easier than you might think. People besides Ares sell guns, people besides the Azzies sell food. In fact every AAA corp sells basically everything. Your house, car, clothes, food, videogames, trideo, etc could ALL be from Ares or Renraku or whoever. That's actually a nice perk to being a corporate citizen in the first place, what with 'discounts' and all as well as why corporate dollars are worth a damn. So if the UCAS decided they REALLY hated Ares for oh I don't know lets just make up something insane like experimenting on insect spirits and seeing their ranks infiltrated by a new species of bugs that have evolved due to science meddling with things beyond the ken of man. The the UCAS might just decide "screw you, all your contracts are going to SK".

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« Last Edit: <03-09-18/0858:28> by Red Herring »
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Marcus

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« Reply #6 on: <03-10-18/0141:34> »
I mean that example probably too extreme, mass murder goes beyond bad PR. Yeah doing bad things and not getting caught is part of the corporate game when doing those things can result in large enough profit to justify the risk. That risk does of course include the PR. If your companies name reaches the level of notoriety that say tenamous has, your employs will become KOS in streets and in the shadows. It could become largely impossible for you to operate in any sort open manner in 1st world nation, and even the rumor of your corporate logo will bring every kind of serious law enforcement, crusading vigilant, ace reporter/blogger, white hat decker down on said operation.

So just keep in mind it's not all PR. Corporate culture is real, and even mega corporate culture while morally flexible, is going to have certain standards. Those standard certainly flexible enough burn or dispose of runners, or direct enemies but killing major neighborhoods whole sale is gonna be well passed acceptable limits.

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frederick.johansen

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« Reply #7 on: <03-11-18/0459:44> »
Also remember you do still have Normal governments like the CAS and the UCAS, granted they are not the super powers of yor but if the AAA megas go to far off their rockers they will initiate military conflicts and it WILL be a significant problem for the AAAs if the UCAS of CAS said all out war on a corps assets located in their territory. Also you have several non AAA mega power blocks in the world such as the great dragons that if they speak up the AAA megas know they need to listen. The best example is when the great dragon went rouge in Aztlan a while back. The Azzies said F*** it were gonna Thorshot / nuke it from orbit to solve the problem and ALL of the great dragons informed them NO they were not as that would result in ALL of the great dragons declaring ALL out to the LAST man/woman/child warfare vs Aztlan if they did. They said you dont get to kill Great dragons, we acknowledge hes a problem and gone to far and we will handle him but you dont get to touch a scale on his head. The Azzies blinked and let the great dragons come in and handel the problem.

If the megacorps have to answer to anyone but each other, then I can understand the PR angle.  I guess  I'm still a bit fuzzy on what limits do exist on the megas.  Here is some background to explain my confusion.  On about 10 years ago now my father was working for an engineering company called Fluor Daniel (now just called Fluor).  They had a potential massive engineering project in Namibia, working for a group of South African investors.  It was involving mining and possibly metal refining as well (it has been awhile, I can't remember all the details).  Well the initial construction was progressing well but they ran into a hick up when the locals wanted to unionize.  This would complicate the project and raise costs.  So one of the local people that worked with my dad arranged a helicopter tour of the work site for the potential union leaders and some of the local overseers (no outside people where invited along).  After showing the potential union leaders all the progress coming from the project for the local area (new roads, a new school and medical center, etc), they were asked if they still wanted to form a union.  The leaders said they did, so one of the people running the project tossed one of the potential union leaders out of the helicopter to their death.  After this there was no discussion of forming a union.  Eventually the market price for whatever metal the project was intended to extract went down enough that it wasn't cost effective to finish the project and it was abandoned.  To me, that is what the megas would be like.  If you pose even the slightest problem to them, they rub you out.  People that is what ensures the best ROI.  Companies don't routinely do this sort of thing where there are strong national governments to make it not cost effective. 

I just need to figure out to what degree the megas have to get cooperation from anyone that isn't a top tier mega.
   

Beta

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« Reply #8 on: <03-11-18/1006:53> »
To me it has always been one of the problems of the SR world that it places the Megas on top of the heap but then often writes things as if society works much like it does now.

Personally the model that works best for me is to understand the big corps, especially the AAA ones, as less like companies and more like feudal states in medieval europe.  The nobility was very powerful, the commoners were treated as little more than chattle much of the time, territories (divisions) were traded back and forth for strategic reasons -- but there was still, mostly, some desire to appear virtuous.  Think of the Corporate Court a bit like the Roman Catholic church -- sure it may be largely owned by the powerful and sometimes blatantly bought, but it can still occasionally come down on someone for going too far.  Even within a corp someone who is too openly horrible may have a hard time making it to the top, because others don't want to end up being under that person.  There may be little external power, but there is some and it makes it easier to have those groups on-side with you.  Even the common people are pleasant to have on your side, cheering you on.

It isn't a perfect model, but to me it fits better than thinking of them as corporations does.

Rosa

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« Reply #9 on: <03-11-18/1303:55> »
Well this thread should really be an extension of the " who buys their. ...." thread since the answers to both questions are more or less the same. The vast majority of the world's population isn't corporate citizens they are national citizens and the nation states of the world still function to a fair degree much like they do today, further more ethics and morality have not changed that much at least in the publics eyes, the national laws are also fairly much like they are today in most areas.

Since any government no matter their perceived strength and invulnerability still derive their power from the consent of the people they rule. So therefore the corps at least have to appear like they give a rats arse about right and wrong because the people they employ do and the nations that have signed the corporate accords do. It would be disastrous to them if the nation states withdrew from the accords wholesale because the corps didn't give two cents for the various national laws.

Carmody

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« Reply #10 on: <03-12-18/0538:45> »
What public are these public relations for?  It is stated over and over again that the public has no self determination, so why care what the public thinks?  The middle lifestyle and above metahumanity are all owned by the megacorps (directly or indirectly), and megacorp citizens won't question their own corp's actions and won't approve the actions of any other corp (regardless of what they do). 

Most have already been said but I would like to react to two points.
First, I think the "no self determination" point should be understood as "the public as a whole is easily influenced to buy whatever crap we want to sell them through advertising and PR campaigns", basically the same as today, maybe slightly more extreme. Bad PR would really mess with this assumption, that's why it's a big issue.

Second, there are much discussion on this forum about the proportion of people who are corporate citizen. Some believe almost every corporate worker is a corporate citizen, other believe that only very important people get the corporate citizenship. This can change a lot.
My understanding is that workers are not corporate citizens, and neither are technicians. I assume that people start to get corporate citizenship at the engineer level (or equivalent in non-technical fields).
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firebug

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« Reply #11 on: <03-12-18/0813:11> »
My understanding is that workers are not corporate citizens, and neither are technicians. I assume that people start to get corporate citizenship at the engineer level (or equivalent in non-technical fields).

I'm no expert, but from the SINner qualities, I assumed it worked something like this:

You get hired at a job for a corp, working up the ladder until you're actually working for something with the megacorp who owns it in the name.  You've just got a normal National SIN up to this point, but you're now offered (read: required for your career) the opportunity to switch to a Corporate Limited SIN.  This is more than just a job now; this is moving where you live to be in their territory, and really buying into their corporate culture.  You wear their clothes and eat their food.  You watch their news stations, listen to their music, and read their books.  This is the point in which a normal working-class citizen becomes a wageslave, now legally a citizen of a corporation over a country.  When the game is talking about wageslaves, it's talking about these people.  The SINless hate them, they are all overworked and underpaid, the corps officially own them.

But before that point, you were working at chains and subsidiaries, places owned by your megacorp but not really directly managed by them.  These places may have been managed by people with Corporate Limited SINs, but you and everyone working there still had National SINs.  You were free to eat wherever you wanted and in your downtime you could dress however and do whatever, like a normal national citizen can, anyways.  This is what most "normal people" are, discounting the SINless.  This is still the average person on the street, the middle class that nobody acknowledges but still exists in Shadowrun.
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Carmody

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« Reply #12 on: <03-12-18/0841:43> »
I always assumed that wageslave was a more generic term referring to people working for the corporations, basically almost anybody with a job, not necessarily a corporate citizen.
I understand the corporate citizenship to offer some real benefits along with duties. Basically if you are corporate citizen you are important enough for the corporation to do some efforts to keep you on board, you get higher paycheck, high recognition, medical care, better education for your kids, and you are kept as much as possible on corporate ground to prevent extraction or other risks. The company owns you, you buy all your stuff from it but it comes with benefits.
On the other hand, all the basic workers and technicians who are expendable and easily replaced do not get the benefit of corporate citizenship. They get low money, no benefits but have no other choice than work for any corporation that agree to hire them whatever the conditions or go to fill the barrens. They envy the former ones and often despise them for that very reason.
Last comes the anarchists, outcasts and among them the runners, who despise all those who are slave of the corporations one way or another and see both categories above as wageslaves.

I do not pretend this to be the truth, that's just my understanding.
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firebug

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« Reply #13 on: <03-12-18/1108:35> »
Quote from: Core Rulebook, pg 84, "Corporate Limited SIN"
With the (Limited) Corporate SIN, the character can be gainfully employed by the issuing megacorporation as a wageslave, a low-ranking member of the corporation’s security services, or an enlisted member of the corporation’s military. Though he could have a secret-level security clearance to perform his duties, he cannot rise to a leadership position, become an officer, or be part of the megacorporation’s Special Forces (such as the Red Samurai).

Going off that, I think it's more about where you work than what you do, as even low-ranking pencil-pusher types can have Limited Corporate SINs.  They're still getting some of the benefits you mentioned, for sure.  Insurance for sure, and a foot in the door for your children to benefit from the corporation's resources (like the better education, etc).  Plus it's generally safer on corp property, and wherever they live (probably some corp-run apartment complex, or rows of duplexes) will be well-kept with reliable utilities.  In exchange, well, I said what they give up in my previous post.  As well, corporate citizens would be held more accountable and more easily tracked.  This way a corp doesn't have to "outsource" for basic shit; if they need someone to cater for a holiday they have their own guys for that, if they need to move some furniture, the drones that do it are produced by them and rigged by their own citizens, so and so forth.  So I really think there's corporate citizens for all kinds of work.

Someone with a national SIN can do the same kind of work or better, but with more freedom and thus much less security.  They get hired by the companies not on corporate property (who don't have all the benefits that "local" businesses on corporate territory have) or work for non-AAA corps and the rare (but still existent) private businesses.
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« Reply #14 on: <03-12-18/1322:43> »
It's worth bearing in mind that only AA- and AAA-rated megacorporations have extraterritoriality and all that goes with it. There are still plenty of A-rated multinationals, not to mention conventional corporations, conglomerates, franchises, and local businesses who rely entirely on local labor with national SINs. Megacorp citizens may be a significant fraction of the global workforce. But it's still only a fraction. "The public" remains a vast source of potential customers for megacorp marketers to target.

Does anyone have a source for percentages employed by megacorps?