Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: Lusis on <09-02-13/1643:07>
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So I'm reading the Corporate Guide and I'm curious if there are any sourcebooks similar to this but in regards to governments?
Is there ANY push-back to corporate power from political sources? Who rules the day in regards to life outside of the AA rated corps?
I'd like to think the SR meta-verse is nuanced enough that there are competing interests outside of the mega-corporations, including those who would like to bring the corps under heel.
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There's a few that would like to, but the issue is that the AAAs and Corporate Court have the Thor shots, and that makes most surface warfare kind of pointless.
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Dirty Tricks is the droid you are looking for.
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There's a few that would like to, but the issue is that the AAAs and Corporate Court have the Thor shots, and that makes most surface warfare kind of pointless.
Oh not open warfare; more of a covert kind of action.
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Dirty Tricks is the droid you are looking for.
Thanks.
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Welcome.
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One of the big funders of shadowruns are UCAS federal agents. And one of their big agendas the return of a strong federal UCAS government. Their budgets have been slashed, but many of the old agencies are still kicking around. Also, there are some things governments do that the Megas can't or just won't do.
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Doing a Hooding 'Run for the FBI or UCAS Marshals might not pay well, but it can have other advantages. Especially if you're going after people they can't normally touch legally (or are handled too easily by the law.).
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And the Marshals when somebody needs to disappear.
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Sure, but would anyone in the UCAS actively attempt to bring down a corporation, and if so, who?
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The survivors of the New Revolution plus others in the the government want the UCAS to be the big dogs again.
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If the NSA and DIA (both tied to the Defense department) got word of the corporation doing things it really shouldn't do, and it was doing so on American soil, or working with people who were about to strike on American soil? Hell, yes. But they wouldn't be able to use any standard forces to do so. Mostly because they would be performing incredibly illegal actions, and hiring known/suspected multiple felons. The amusing thing about the New Revolution is that while it had infiltrated the CIA and other aspects of the federal bureaucracy pretty thoroughly, it hadn't managed to touch the NSA or DIA.
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Sure, but would anyone in the UCAS actively attempt to bring down a corporation, and if so, who?
(http://blog.ascentis.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/irs.jpg)
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They just wish they could get the AAAs to pay taxes.
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They just wish they could get the AAAs to pay taxes.
Do not underestimate the power of unpaid taxes or the IRS. The FBI had to go to the IRS in order to get Capone on tax evasion, after all.
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Let me rephrase that: They wish they could legally tax the megas.
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Oh the megas do pay taxes. However, their lobbyists pretty much tell the Congress what the tax rates and exceptions should be. Kind of like the real life current day US, but much more blatant. The corps do want for example some public infrastructure, which requires taxes be paid. They just don't want to pay a lot. And they don't really care about say how great the roads are in the Redmond Barrens.
The Neo Anarchists are the guys that really oppose the Corps. But they vary a lot in professionalism. Many of them are just screaming idiots and the like. The Berlin chapter in particular seems to be hardcore professional rebels. The fact that Captain Chaos was one also seems to indicate that they have some professionals among them. They never seem to succeed in making any kind of meaninful largescale change though. Not that surprising, considering it's a dystopia. And look at who their oppenents are. The Berlin chapter who are probaly the best of them are trying to make problems for Lofwyr the Great Dragon. Not the healthiest of occupations.
Yeah, one of my roster of Johnsons that I reuse is Stuart Glassman, elite auditor for the IRS. He basically pays shadowrunners to go seize items such as vehicles from rich UCAS citizens that aren't paying their taxes.
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Good, easy work compared to some jobs out there.
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The Chrome Accountant used to be an IRS Agent, IIRC. I think he became a Shadowrunner because it paid better, got him better respect, and was safer.
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The Chrome Accountant used to be an IRS Agent, IIRC. I think he became a Shadowrunner because it paid better, got him better respect, and was safer.
It's all about dollars and sense.
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They just wish they could get the AAAs to pay taxes.
Do not underestimate the power of unpaid taxes or the IRS. The FBI had to go to the IRS in order to get Capone on tax evasion, after all.
Capone was a local crime boss and the US a functioning state. The UCAS (and pretty much everything else) is a 3rd world nation while the AAAs are separate states with superpower status, what exactly is the IRS gonna do?
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We were taught to think that bad = criminal outlaw. If it's bad, there ought to be a law banning it and law enforcement to go after the perpetrator.
In Shadowrun setting (and generic cyberpunk setting at large), corporations are bad. Because of the aforementioned teaching, we tend to think that what they do must be illegal and that they just don't get caught for some reasons, like law enforcement and the government at large not doing its duty.
But it doesn't work like that. Corporations are legal beasts by nature. They do not break the law. What they do is have the law rewritten the way it suits them. And it may includes still having the government cracking down on anyone who does not respect the law (including the corporations who did not realize they were no longer in the alpha predator pack).
That's typically the case for everything extraterritoriality allow the megacorporation to do: they can have for free the government harassing all those A-rated smaller competing corporations for trying to do what the big boys do.
The thing is, it works with the "megacorporations" as a whole. Nine of the Big Ten may agree that, say, a 5% flat tax for megacorporation is the Right Thing to balance UCAS budget and fund Pentagon procurement plans. If the head of Renraku Americas tries to pay only 4.87% to proudly display a better profit margin than Renraku Asia at the big board, and get caught, he may find himself on the wrong end of a decision (or worst, a congressional inquiry) based on a report written thanks to intelligence anonymously handed over by other megacorporations intelligence services, backed by politicians whose campaigns were funded by these corporations, and covered by medias owned by them.
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They just wish they could get the AAAs to pay taxes.
Do not underestimate the power of unpaid taxes or the IRS. The FBI had to go to the IRS in order to get Capone on tax evasion, after all.
Capone was a local crime boss and the US a functioning state. The UCAS (and pretty much everything else) is a 3rd world nation while the AAAs are separate states with superpower status, what exactly is the IRS gonna do?
The Megas still would pay tax for the same reason they keep the governments around. To manage the day to day functions like maintaining roadworks, infrastructure and so on that they don't want to have to muck around with.
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To the extent that the Megas pay taxes it's only on territory subject to national law. A Stuffer Shack in DC might very well pay sales taxes to the UCAS and or local governments. A Stuffer Shack in the concourse at the extraterritorial Renraku Archology might pay sales tax (more likely not, just a rental agreement) to Renraku and a Stuffer Shack on Aztechnology corporate soil wouldn't pay taxes to anyone.
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The Megas still would pay tax for the same reason they keep the governments around. To manage the day to day functions like maintaining roadworks, infrastructure and so on that they don't want to have to muck around with.
The word you are looking for is "development aid", not "tax". Who knows, maybe Renraku holds an annual concert where all the bigwigs (remember, it's not just that the Fortune 500 started their own states, they also took all the big earners along with them) can donate for all those poor ex-powers ;)
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To the extent that the Megas pay taxes it's only on territory subject to national law. A Stuffer Shack in DC might very well pay sales taxes to the UCAS and or local governments. A Stuffer Shack in the concourse at the extraterritorial Renraku Archology might pay sales tax (more likely not, just a rental agreement) to Renraku and a Stuffer Shack on Aztechnology corporate soil wouldn't pay taxes to anyone.
What a Stuffer Shack would pay to Renraku would be more appropriately called "royalties". I don't think corporations have a point in borrowing terminology from state governance, even if the result is very similar.
Extraterritoriality is no unique solution for tax evasion. Corporations still have to move raw materials and goods in and out the factories and stores, and as they leave extraterritorial enclaves, they becomes subject to tariffs. Also, corporations are not and cannot be fully operating on extraterritoriality. Extraterritoriality applies where the corporations has ownership, lease or rental of a facility. The act of ownership, lease or rental itself is not subject to extraterritoriality, since it is the requirement for it. So corporations may be subject to land taxes for instance.
The corporation very existence is also immaterial and a such does not take place in particular place that could be extraterritorial. Physically, Ares Macrotechnology is nowhere except maybe as a registration form stored somewhere by Michigan state administration. Corporate sales may take place in extraterritorial facilities treated as outside of UCAS soil and thus not be subject to VAT, corporate benefits on the other hand are just numbers on a filling. It does not matter where it came from (the tax code only cares if it was already taxed by another country).
Oh, and the Renraku Arcology example is starting to really get old. The Seattle arcology has been shut down for fifteen years now.
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OK insert any other piece of extrateritorial land. The Renraku Arcology seemed like a convenient shorthand for "Extrateritorial corporate holding in which a second party corporation might conceivable have a storefront."
I doubt whether governments have much power to levy taxes other than sales and use taxes in the 2070s.
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Extraterritoriality is no unique solution for tax evasion. Corporations still have to move raw materials and goods in and out the factories and stores, and as they leave extraterritorial enclaves, they becomes subject to tariffs. Also, corporations are not and cannot be fully operating on extraterritoriality. Extraterritoriality applies where the corporations has ownership, lease or rental of a facility. The act of ownership, lease or rental itself is not subject to extraterritoriality, since it is the requirement for it. So corporations may be subject to land taxes for instance.
Corps are sovereign national entities, with citizenship, military, and everything else various theories of statehood demand. If they buy land, it's like the purchase of Alaska -- they pay the price, maybe adhere to other conditions of the treaty, but it's their territory.
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Corporations are not sovereign.
For AA megacorporations, all it takes is seven judges of the Corporate Court to vote "yes" for them to loose AA status, extraterritoriality and everything they had that break the laws of the countries where it's located.
For Evo, Horizon and Wuxing, it requires a majority vote from the Big Ten (involving weighted votes formulae) when their representative seat on the court is up for reelection.
For the founding members of the court, it would require a rewrite of the Corporate Court charter, which may be slightly more complicated to reach, but it still does not make them sovereign.
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My question is an exploration of ideas for runs; where runners are working for a gov't entity against a corporation or other gov't entity.
Corporations are basically an allegory for the feudal kingdoms of old Europe, in SR; however, the corps-as-villains is almost cliche at this point. At the same time, secretive gov't organizations conducting less-than-legal operations is almost cliche in RL fiction (even though it happens at an increasing rate these days, but I digress).
So my challenge to myself is to devise a likely conspiracy where a gov't agency seeks to control the corps through infiltration and assassination. . The details of the run can handle myself.
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We were taught to think that bad = criminal outlaw. If it's bad, there ought to be a law banning it and law enforcement to go after the perpetrator.
In Shadowrun setting (and generic cyberpunk setting at large), corporations are bad. Because of the aforementioned teaching, we tend to think that what they do must be illegal and that they just don't get caught for some reasons, like law enforcement and the government at large not doing its duty.
But it doesn't work like that. Corporations are legal beasts by nature. They do not break the law. What they do is have the law rewritten the way it suits them. And it may includes still having the government cracking down on anyone who does not respect the law (including the corporations who did not realize they were no longer in the alpha predator pack).
That's typically the case for everything extraterritoriality allow the megacorporation to do: they can have for free the government harassing all those A-rated smaller competing corporations for trying to do what the big boys do.
The thing is, it works with the "megacorporations" as a whole. Nine of the Big Ten may agree that, say, a 5% flat tax for megacorporation is the Right Thing to balance UCAS budget and fund Pentagon procurement plans. If the head of Renraku Americas tries to pay only 4.87% to proudly display a better profit margin than Renraku Asia at the big board, and get caught, he may find himself on the wrong end of a decision (or worst, a congressional inquiry) based on a report written thanks to intelligence anonymously handed over by other megacorporations intelligence services, backed by politicians whose campaigns were funded by these corporations, and covered by medias owned by them.
So corporations aren't Bad since they prompte Running.
And true, they make laws to suit themselves but that does not make them a legal entity. They lack or did lack a moral justification for their actions hense the distinct possibility that someone will get killed just for doing what they, the corporations expect. something immoral and illigal.
Or get killed just being in the wrong place at the wrong time or not bad enough to take what you want or just not being bad enough to carry a gun whenever possible. also illigal in the shadowrun setting.....
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My question is an exploration of ideas for runs; where runners are working for a gov't entity against a corporation or other gov't entity.
Corporations are basically an allegory for the feudal kingdoms of old Europe, in SR; however, the corps-as-villains is almost cliche at this point. At the same time, secretive gov't organizations conducting less-than-legal operations is almost cliche in RL fiction (even though it happens at an increasing rate these days, but I digress).
So my challenge to myself is to devise a likely conspiracy where a gov't agency seeks to control the corps through infiltration and assassination. . The details of the run can handle myself.
The only difference is they dont openly declare each other in wrong doing. No profit in that....
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Lusis, you might look at the potential of Megacorps using governement agencies as a catspaw or cutout. For instance Ares wants to hit Aztechnology, but wants to avoid any potential blowback so instead of hiring runners herself the head of Ares Atlanta calls a contact in the Confederation Intelligence Agency and has the contact tap a slush fund to pay for a run against a nominally Aztlaner target that would hurt Aztechnology. So even if the runners get caught Aztechnology would have to trace the money through the CAS government before Ares gets implicated.
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I'll point out that while we harp on the big corporations for rigging the game legally and politically; there is a whole other side to the coin. The politicians and bureaucrats also seek to rig the game in their favor, consolidate their power, etc. Simplistically put. in the corporate world, money is above power. In the political world, it is the opposite.
SR blurs these lines; however. Power has been shifted away from the political realm into the corporate one, and big business is a feudalistic quasi-governmental system on steroids. The question I have, is where does this leave the politicians and bureaucrats? Their prime motivation is the acquisition of power; so are they just going to let the corps have it all without pushing back? Are bureaucrats in SR just hacks and any an all talent is in the tank for the Big Ten?
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Lusis, you might look at the potential of Megacorps using governement agencies as a catspaw or cutout. For instance Ares wants to hit Aztechnology, but wants to avoid any potential blowback so instead of hiring runners herself the head of Ares Atlanta calls a contact in the Confederation Intelligence Agency and has the contact tap a slush fund to pay for a run against a nominally Aztlaner target that would hurt Aztechnology. So even if the runners get caught Aztechnology would have to trace the money through the CAS government before Ares gets implicated.
While it makes perfect sense, I'm more inclined to throw a monkeywrench in the plot, and say that a group within the CIA seeks to infiltrate Ares and conduct a false-flag operation that would lead to their downfall. Prompting Congress to enact a law that essentially takes over the company and brings it under the perview of the UCAS/CAS/whatever government, therefore establishing a national governing body as a force to actually be reckoned with.
Feasible?
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Corporations are not sovereign.
Well if it's in bold then it must be right...
For AA megacorporations, all it takes is seven judges of the Corporate Court to vote "yes" for them to loose AA status, extraterritoriality and everything they had that break the laws of the countries where it's located.
For Evo, Horizon and Wuxing, it requires a majority vote from the Big Ten (involving weighted votes formulae) when their representative seat on the court is up for reelection.
For the founding members of the court, it would require a rewrite of the Corporate Court charter, which may be slightly more complicated to reach, but it still does not make them sovereign.
So, if another nation or body of nations have the hypothetical ability to decide at some point they don't like an entity being sovereign, that entity is not? Looks like you just proved that no nation is sovereign, because neighbor states or even the UN might at some point formally declare "nah, we don't recognize X as a sovereign nation anymore", done.
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Lusis, you might look at the potential of Megacorps using governement agencies as a catspaw or cutout. For instance Ares wants to hit Aztechnology, but wants to avoid any potential blowback so instead of hiring runners herself the head of Ares Atlanta calls a contact in the Confederation Intelligence Agency and has the contact tap a slush fund to pay for a run against a nominally Aztlaner target that would hurt Aztechnology. So even if the runners get caught Aztechnology would have to trace the money through the CAS government before Ares gets implicated.
While it makes perfect sense, I'm more inclined to throw a monkeywrench in the plot, and say that a group within the CIA seeks to infiltrate Ares and conduct a false-flag operation that would lead to their downfall. Prompting Congress to enact a law that essentially takes over the company and brings it under the perview of the UCAS/CAS/whatever government, therefore establishing a national governing body as a force to actually be reckoned with.
Feasible?
Feasible, unlikely to succeed, but feasible. Although frankly the CAS would be unlikely to target Ares as they're pretty chummy with the CAS/UCAS military industrial complex. you can put as many cutouts as you want.
For instance-
Aztteschnology is using
Aztlan Intelligence to control a
Texan Seperatist Group to infiltrate
the CAS intelligence apparatus to manipulate
a UCAS based AA corp into Activating sleeper agents in
The UCAS FBI to begin a deep cover false flag operation
To pit Ares and Renraku against each other.
Could be really byzantine. Actually looking at that there's a reasonable chance that you could put together a random corp plot generator...
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The amusing thing about the New Revolution is that while it had infiltrated the CIA and other aspects of the federal bureaucracy pretty thoroughly, it hadn't managed to touch the NSA or DIA.
hehehe
It very much touched the DIA. The only spy agency the NR didn't infiltrate was the IRS's Enforcement Division.
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It's also been a few years since I read the material. And by the way, the CASS uses their EPA like a baseball bat to the knees of corps that screw up.
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So, if another nation or body of nations have the hypothetical ability to decide at some point they don't like an entity being sovereign, that entity is not? Looks like you just proved that no nation is sovereign, because neighbor states or even the UN might at some point formally declare "nah, we don't recognize X as a sovereign nation anymore", done.
An entity ceases to be sovereign when it loses either independence or authority over its territory, or when it ceases to exist altogether.
Nations can willingly submit to international treaties, but they can also unilaterally ignore or exit them. They can do whatever they want at home. Another, more powerful nation can decide that it deserves invading them or toppling their government by force. When a government changes it policies because of the (perceived) certainty of an invasion if they don't, you can put their independence in question, and thus their sovereignty. Yes, a few years ago, the idea of an "international community" bound by UN decisions did exactly that for a lot of countries. Just like in Shadowrun, the threat of Corporate Court economical sanctions appears to be enough for most countries to no longer be truly independent and sovereign.
Megacorporations on the other hand, adhere to the Corporate Court charter, which contains, along with the Business Recognition Accords signed by most countries, provisions which require all these corporations and countries to stop accepting a corporation's authority over its properties when the Corporate Court says it no longer fulfills the requirements.
A corporation cannot seriously expects its security and military forces would be able to hold off all the other megacorporations and all the countries it operates in from exerting their authority inside its facilities, while dealing with the economical sanctions. Only the Big Ten may possibly consider that they are so important for the world economy and have enough WMD at hand to ensure economical or military MAD (like the US or China nowadays) that it puts them in a gray area were they're neither truly independent nor really dependent, but interdependent.
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Megacorporations on the other hand, adhere to the Corporate Court charter, which contains, along with the Business Recognition Accords signed by most countries, provisions which require all these corporations and countries to stop accepting a corporation's authority over its properties when the Corporate Court says it no longer fulfills the requirements.
...and then what? Does the world police appear and put the corporation (the legal entity) into prison? Because anything else is the same which might happen to a real nation, which you insist are completely different...
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...and then what? Does the world police appear and put the corporation (the legal entity) into prison? Because anything else is the same which might happen to a real nation, which you insist are completely different...
It just doesn't happen. They have too much riding on the status quo to interrupt it. The system is rigged in their favor, so there is pretty much no reason big enough to challenge it. We actually do have a good example. Renraku Shutdown. Renraku clearly wanted to handle the situation with their own forces and was making threats. They ultimately were forced to back down.
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SR blurs these lines; however. Power has been shifted away from the political realm into the corporate one, and big business is a feudalistic quasi-governmental system on steroids. The question I have, is where does this leave the politicians and bureaucrats? Their prime motivation is the acquisition of power; so are they just going to let the corps have it all without pushing back? Are bureaucrats in SR just hacks and any an all talent is in the tank for the Big Ten
The beuracrats are just like current beuracrats. For most of them their goals to maintain and increase their budgets. The difference is their budgets have been slashed, so they are even more hungry. And yes, many of them are corporate shills, just as many cops are bought by someone.
There are more bought politicians in the SR setting, but that does not mean it's the only kind. For example, racial politics are a huge thing. Both pro and anti meta. There's a surprising amount of racist voters, as shown by the rise of Brackhaven and the generally racist nature of the Renton government. (Hah, I lived in Renton for a couple years in RL. Freaked me out after reading all about it in SR)
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While I agree with Nath that Corporations are not sovereign entities... corporate citizenship does cloud the issue. Does a nation entity which recognises the the citizens of another entity,also recognise that the 'nationality' of the entity exists and therefore the entity is in fact a nation-state?
In otherwords, if UCAS allows for Renraku employed wageslaves to renouces their UCAS citizenship and take up Renraku citizenship, isn't the UCAS actually acknowledging Renraku as a peer and fellow nation-state?
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So, if another nation or body of nations have the hypothetical ability to decide at some point they don't like an entity being sovereign, that entity is not? Looks like you just proved that no nation is sovereign, because neighbor states or even the UN might at some point formally declare "nah, we don't recognize X as a sovereign nation anymore", done.
An entity ceases to be sovereign when it loses either independence or authority over its territory, or when it ceases to exist altogether.
Nations can willingly submit to international treaties, but they can also unilaterally ignore or exit them. They can do whatever they want at home. Another, more powerful nation can decide that it deserves invading them or toppling their government by force. When a government changes it policies because of the (perceived) certainty of an invasion if they don't, you can put their independence in question, and thus their sovereignty. Yes, a few years ago, the idea of an "international community" bound by UN decisions did exactly that for a lot of countries. Just like in Shadowrun, the threat of Corporate Court economical sanctions appears to be enough for most countries to no longer be truly independent and sovereign.
Megacorporations on the other hand, adhere to the Corporate Court charter, which contains, along with the Business Recognition Accords signed by most countries, provisions which require all these corporations and countries to stop accepting a corporation's authority over its properties when the Corporate Court says it no longer fulfills the requirements.
A corporation cannot seriously expects its security and military forces would be able to hold off all the other megacorporations and all the countries it operates in from exerting their authority inside its facilities, while dealing with the economical sanctions. Only the Big Ten may possibly consider that they are so important for the world economy and have enough WMD at hand to ensure economical or military MAD (like the US or China nowadays) that it puts them in a gray area were they're neither truly independent nor really dependent, but interdependent.
Dependence on others is a condition of Sovereignty. International Trade is almost wholly regulated by Treaties, in turn regulated by the U.N.
Peace treaties and regulation of Armed Forces is only regulated by the U.N.
And very few countries even bother to pen the responability to do the same.
No nation can say they dont rely on others for trade, some more than others. And no nation can say that they dont rely on the U.N. as the governing body.
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So in the Shadowrun world it is not a coincidence that the regulation of the Matrix and Awakened persuits parallel the individual nations forming a web of dependence with their neighbors, loosely based on the corporate courts whos influence they continue to lessen.
The shadowrun world is literally a safer place if only a little.....
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Dependence on others is a condition of Sovereignty. International Trade is almost wholly regulated by Treaties, in turn regulated by the U.N.
Peace treaties and regulation of Armed Forces is only regulated by the U.N.
And very few countries even bother to pen the responability to do the same.
No nation can say they dont rely on others for trade, some more than others. And no nation can say that they dont rely on the U.N. as the governing body.
Treaties are not regulated by the U.N.
'Regulation' of armed forces are not controlled by the UN. A few treaties are around which seek to limit/control the use of certain weapons, and the Geneva Convention and subsequent agreements do seek to regulate the 'rules' of war. But not all of these are via the U.N. and most agreements have limited agreement power due to key stakeholders not being signaturoies.
The U.N. is not a governing body.
Trade agreements are often between two or more nations, with no U.N. involvement.
International Law, such as it exists in any enforceable manner, is often administered via the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, neither of which are part of the U.N.
The exception to this is the Geneva Convention and its 'enforcement' by the United Nations Security Council (enforcement is rarely actually undertaken). The U.N. body used for International Law matters is the International Court of Justice aka the World Court. The World Court decisions are only bindng if both parties submit to its judgement and even then, Security Council members can veto cases and decisions.
The U.N. is a membership organisation which promotes and facilities co-operation between member nations (which is far from every nation-state).
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Dark has a point. The Geneva Conventions (there are several) are the original basis for international law. They are a set of what is an is not allowed in warfare. One of the biggest sticklers with international law is that while most countries consider WMDs to only be nuclear weapons, the US considers the full NBC spectrum to be WMDs. Basically, the UN inspectors were only looking for nuclear weapons, while the US teams were looking for the full spectrum. By the UN definition, Saddam did not violate the treaty, as he did not make any nuclear weapons. By the US definition, he did violate the treaty by making nerve gas to use on the Kurds.
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this is straying a little close to the line here guys :D
Try to bring it back into the 2070s 'Kay? :P
Have to remember, there was a LOT of little stepping stones to how the megas got the power they did:
Seratech:
Shawaise 1:
Shawaise 2:
Corp Court "Edicts" (Basically a thinly veiled threat behind a list of Corp/State Rights and priviledges that, if countries want the better world interest rates... better think about strongly...)
Then add in the turmoil of VITAS 1, VITAS 2, CRASH 1.0...UGE, Goblinization, then throw in the Awakening!! Governments are slow to change, political opinions and expectations even slower.... Entire countries fell in the upheaval....
and through it all...
No Matter how dark things got..
No matter what was happening on the streets...
You know...
You just KNOW, that at Shawaise, everything is all right. Eveyone has a place, and are valued all the same principiles as the Kami of the Corporation... and is thus both Just, and Holy.
And you.
You get stale, mostly moldy bread, and soup made from gutter water and the remains of 11 other soup cans.....
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...and then what? Does the world police appear and put the corporation (the legal entity) into prison? Because anything else is the same which might happen to a real nation, which you insist are completely different...
If you want to use legal terminology, then it goes with a functional legal system. There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.
Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves, and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.
Megacorporations joins the Corporate Court, and are granted the right to ignore national authority inside their facilities. It's the Corporate Court that forces nations to recognize this right. No corporations ever individually established itself as the sovereign authority over a track of land. They can have as many security guards and military troops inside their facilities, the surrounding nation is not going to try to exert their authority inside anyway. You may say this grant them a de facto sovereignty. But if one corporation was to openly claim that its authority over one facility only derives from its military might and not from the Business Recognition Accords, that would be questioning the Corporate Court own authority. And the keystone to SR corporate system as it existed so far is that the megacorporations are willing to unite behind the Corporate Court to defeat any single megacorporation that don't play by the rules.
The Big Seven wanted to decide, through the Corporate Court, which corporation gets extraterritoriality, and which does not. Not because it sounded fun, but because it was power. If they let corporations decide to get extraterritoriality on their own, they lose that power.
If you want to switch directly to "might makes right" and that the only legitimacy comes from the effective use of force and not the mere threat of it, then there's no point in saying that corporations are "sovereign national entities," because you're ruling out that sovereignty has any meaning whatsoever for neither nations nor corporations.
While I agree with Nath that Corporations are not sovereign entities... corporate citizenship does cloud the issue. Does a nation entity which recognises the the citizens of another entity,also recognise that the 'nationality' of the entity exists and therefore the entity is in fact a nation-state?
In otherwords, if UCAS allows for Renraku employed wageslaves to renouces their UCAS citizenship and take up Renraku citizenship, isn't the UCAS actually acknowledging Renraku as a peer and fellow nation-state?
The UCAS can accept renunciation of citizenship, but it has no business in checking what other citizenship the person may be seeking. However, most countries actually don't even allow their citizen to renounce citizenship (the US is one of the few that does, allowing people to stop paying US taxes that otherwise must be paid by every US citizens).
The idea of dual or multiple citizenship is also pretty misleading. As far as the UCAS is concerned, you're either one of its citizen, or you're not.
One good example of this are consular assistance and extradition cases. Say you have someone arrested in Washington for stealing classified documents. If he only has Israeli citizenship, he can charged for spying and can require consular assistance. If he has Israeli-UCAS "dual citizenship", he can be charged for treason and cannot require consular assistance, as he's detained by his own country. But if he flees and moves to Israel, he won't be extradited because Israel, like most countries, does not extradite its own citizens.
As far as I know, foreign citizenship is only legally recognized for crossing borders and consular assistance (plus some bilateral agreements regarding military service for dual nationals). I know off precedents of recognized non-state citizenship for international organizations.
Members of the United Nations must accept diplomatic and service passports issued to UN personnel, even if they don't recognize the person's citizenship. I think the Holy See can also issue diplomatic and service passports, which are not the same than Vatican citizen passports. So I guess it's the same for other international organizations that don't belong to the UN, like Interpol. Citizens of European Union countries also have "EU citizenship" that allow them in some countries outside the EU to benefit from consular assistance of another EU country (while inside the EU, they're just a foreigner, who can be extradited and charged for spying).
I don't think there's something against accepting corporate ID documents when issuing visas, nor against allowing people legal assistance from their employer. It's calling it a citizenship that may be the biggest problem.
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Dependence on others is a condition of Sovereignty. International Trade is almost wholly regulated by Treaties, in turn regulated by the U.N.
Peace treaties and regulation of Armed Forces is only regulated by the U.N.
And very few countries even bother to pen the responability to do the same.
No nation can say they dont rely on others for trade, some more than others. And no nation can say that they dont rely on the U.N. as the governing body.
Treaties are not regulated by the U.N.
'Regulation' of armed forces are not controlled by the UN. A few treaties are around which seek to limit/control the use of certain weapons, and the Geneva Convention and subsequent agreements do seek to regulate the 'rules' of war. But not all of these are via the U.N. and most agreements have limited agreement power due to key stakeholders not being signaturoies.
The U.N. is not a governing body.
Trade agreements are often between two or more nations, with no U.N. involvement.
International Law, such as it exists in any enforceable manner, is often administered via the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, neither of which are part of the U.N.
The exception to this is the Geneva Convention and its 'enforcement' by the United Nations Security Council (enforcement is rarely actually undertaken). The U.N. body used for International Law matters is the International Court of Justice aka the World Court. The World Court decisions are only bindng if both parties submit to its judgement and even then, Security Council members can veto cases and decisions.
The U.N. is a membership organisation which promotes and facilities co-operation between member nations (which is far from every nation-state).
Every peace treaty written over the last 150 years is documented within the U.N. and were used give legality to UINCEF, Pececorps, IAEA, IEA, ec....
The formation IEA for example is a condition of the treatied surrender of Germany and Japan after world War II.
No one can enforce trade tariff except the U.N. No one wants too...
Nobody's law is binding if the parties don't want to comply.The would just accepts the U.N. peaceful role in their daily functioning.
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My International Law grade retroactively fell a grade reading this thread.
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Correction Fenris: What give the UN the teeth to enforce anything is the United States Military 80% of the time. The remaining 20% of the time, the UN is effectively useless. While every treaty for the last 150 years may be documented within the UN, Trade tariffs are enforced by the individual countries. The last war the US got into that was purely trade related was when we invaded the Phillipines, because we wanted to stop them from shooting at our ships. Since, while trade may be a part of why we get involved, it's usually remembering treaty obligations that the State Department would rather forget. See Desert Storm. The US had a standing treaty to provide military aid to Kuwait, should somebody attack. Saddam Hussein's people called the State Department to ask permission to invade, and received it. Desert Storm was not a UN op, but they were allowed to join in. Operation Iraqi Freedom was most definitely not a UN op, though members of the UN were involved. The last two major UN ops were Somalia and Sarajevo. Both were disasters from the operational standpoint, due to a lack of a clear chain of command, poor intelligence, and no clear rules of engagement. Those were also the absolute last times US soldiers were placed under UN command.
Most of what the UN does is further an agenda that does little to nothing involving the actual charter. The Human Rights Commission is filled with the worst violators of human rights, the Trade Commission does not include the United States, one of the largest customers of the world,, and the Secretary General is usually from a small country nobody cares about. The ICC is not the UN, and the US has little to nothing to do with it, due to the Nuremburg Trials, The ECHR, however is listened to by everyone BUT the State Department, because one of the main legal documents they reference is the US Constitution. By the way, one of the first legal documents to address human rights for everyone, not just the nobility. The "human rights violations" at Guantanamo Bay are illegal combatants by the definitions of the Geneva Conventions that the US has signed.
That right, we could have just killed them all, and been well within our legal rights. That is the main issue when talking about International Law, and the UN as an enforcer of it.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCpjgl2baLs
Am I close?
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Pretty much. And my the US definition, the use of biological and chemical weapons earn a nuclear surprise.
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Dark has a point. The Geneva Conventions (there are several) are the original basis for international law. They are a set of what is an is not allowed in warfare. One of the biggest sticklers with international law is that while most countries consider WMDs to only be nuclear weapons, the US considers the full NBC spectrum to be WMDs. Basically, the UN inspectors were only looking for nuclear weapons, while the US teams were looking for the full spectrum. By the UN definition, Saddam did not violate the treaty, as he did not make any nuclear weapons. By the US definition, he did violate the treaty by making nerve gas to use on the Kurds.
Talk of real world politics is NOT allowed on these forums by the Terms of Service. Even if the politics is pseudo-historical by nature of the game, it is still NOT allowed. Please stay on topic, or this topic will be locked.
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There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.
Court = Judiciary
Police = Executive
Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.
And what precise act do they perform to "establish their authority" which differentiates a nation like, say, Poland, from a megacorp? Also, not being internationally recognized does not mean the country disappears in a puff of smoke or gets annexed. The ROC (Taiwan) got formally booted from the UN and only a handful of minor states formerly recognize it, they're still around.
As for some side points being mentioned in this thread...
- WMDs being commonly, and especially by the UN, understood to only refer to nuclear weapons? Bullshit, the very first UN resolution already referred to "atomic weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction"
- The ECHR cites the US constitution and is respected as law everywhere? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Council_of_Europe_(blue).svg
- "The UN" can impose tariffs? Sure, and then those will have to be paid when entering the territory of the UN...which is where exactly?
Seriously, reading this thread is like reading sourcebooks (esp. the older ones) on extraterritoriality: Not even knowing the difference between the Vienna Conventions and real Extraterritoriality, but wanting to explain the world how it works.
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There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.
Court = Judiciary
Police = Executive
Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.
And what precise act do they perform to "establish their authority" which differentiates a nation like, say, Poland, from a megacorp? Also, not being internationally recognized does not mean the country disappears in a puff of smoke or gets annexed. The ROC (Taiwan) got formally booted from the UN and only a handful of minor states formerly recognize it, they're still around.
As for some side points being mentioned in this thread...
- WMDs being commonly, and especially by the UN, understood to only refer to nuclear weapons? Bullshit, the very first UN resolution already referred to "atomic weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction"
- The ECHR cites the US constitution and is respected as law everywhere? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Council_of_Europe_(blue).svg
- "The UN" can impose tariffs? Sure, and then those will have to be paid when entering the territory of the UN...which is where exactly?
Seriously, reading this thread is like reading sourcebooks (esp. the older ones) on extraterritoriality: Not even knowing the difference between the Vienna Conventions and real Extraterritoriality, but wanting to explain the world how it works.
I will respond to your post and i will leave the discussion to approved topic matter.....
The topic of tariffs and the U.N.
Someone brought up the operation in Sarajevo.
The U.N. took over that operation after the European community sent troops to establish peace and ended up fighting and killing local ground troops.
The U.N. peacekeeping force backed by U.N. Charter and members, intervened and demanded that all participants, the European countries sending combat forces, begin sending relief aid (a tariff).
Which was denied and sited by most as a reason to withdraw all personel from the area. leaving the U.N. peacekeeping troops to condut police actions....
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So what power do the UCAS, CAS, NaN, etc actually have? Is the point of national gov't to keep the riff-raff (A-rated and lower) in-line?
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There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.
Court = Judiciary
Police = Executive
If you intend on respecting separation of powers, yes. Which the Corporate Court does not. The Corporate Court is not only an arbitrage body, but also a bank (Zurich-Orbital Gemeinshaft Bank) and a law enforcement agency (Grid Overwatch Division). In 2048, the Corporate Court established a "Pan-Corporate Security Committee" that decided, ordered and planned military strikes on Ensenada. The court also wrote the Concord, which should have been the duty of a legislative powers.
Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.
And what precise act do they perform to "establish their authority" which differentiates a nation like, say, Poland, from a megacorp? Also, not being internationally recognized does not mean the country disappears in a puff of smoke or gets annexed. The ROC (Taiwan) got formally booted from the UN and only a handful of minor states formerly recognize it, they're still around
The precise act nation perform to establish their authority is enacting and applying their own set of laws. Unless you consider the specific case of terra nullius, this requires the nation that ruled the territory previously and whose laws are no longer applied to either de facto recognize the new nation, or invade/police them to re-establish their own authority.
There is no such thing as "international recognition", as it's just a way of saying "diplomatic recognition by some arbitrarily large number of other nations" or "recognition by enough United Nations members to get a majority vote for adhesion".
By not sending policemen and judges in Taiwan to apply Beijing laws, the PRC is tacitly recognizing it doesn't have sovereignty over Taiwan. It may claim that Taiwan is a lawless land ruled by a corrupt insurgent movement that doesn't qualify as a state or whatever. By not applying its law over this territory and letting local authorities apply their law, it nonetheless opens the way to consider Taiwan as a sovereign territory.
Shadowrun corporations don't enact law and don't apply them before the local government or the Corporate Court give them the right to do so, and they do so in accordance with the limits set by the Business Recognition Accords and the local regulations regarding extraterritoriality (like the rules applied in the CAS, Quebec, Pueblo...).
Violations of these rule are bound to happen (just like crime exists elsewhere), but corporations are still trying to hide them. There are specific examples of Aztechnology in the Pueblo and Renraku in the UCAS submitting to government rulings. This alone establishes that all Aztechnology or Renraku facilities cannot be considered as sovereign and, more important, that they don't consider themselves as such.
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So what power do the UCAS, CAS, NaN, etc actually have? Is the point of national gov't to keep the riff-raff (A-rated and lower) in-line?
I don't think it has been addressed anywhere, but I'd say the megacorporations would be silly not do so. They enjoy dominant positions with large market shares. New, innovating business are nothing but a threat to them. Forcing the wanna-be competitors to abide by minimum wages, maximum working hours, toxic waste regulations and the likes would make it difficult for them to encroach on the megacorporations market shares, and force them to seek a partnership with an extraterritorial corporation for development. And those who nonetheless try to stay independent will just be easier targets for datasteal and sabotage if their security guards cannot have restricted gear. And so it would explain how and why it's always the same dozen of megacorporations that stay on the top and release the latest technology, while RL experience rather show that there should unavoidably be breakthrough brought by newcomers.
Otherwise, the sourcebooks stay rather silent on what the national government are for. Some authors actually keep their Shadowrun very similar to real life (considering that RL already accounts for greedy evil multinationals). One good example of this is Ares Macrotechnology. Everyone knows it makes a living of selling weapons, but depending on who you ask/what you read, the customers either are governments (which would require some military budget and thus taxes) or strictly and only corporations.
The same goes for law enforcement. It's a staple of Shadowrun that Knight Errant or Lone Star perform police duties. Which implies the municipalities have enough money to pay them (though it is also often mentioned that Lone Star officers were underpaid).
So basically, nations probably are mostly treated by megacorporations as a convenient way to gather consumers/taxpayers money for major contracts. Why bother trying to convince one hundred thousand persons in the UCAS to buy a new Ares Predator when you could simply convince three hundreds Congressmen to buy two new air carriers?
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So basically this is an area of the SR metaverse that needs to be fleshed out. To break it down to Barney-level:
-Yes, the megacorps are going to buy influence that will enact legislation to regulate competition.
-The corps are, above all other concerns, in business to sell products to consumers; whether those consumers are private citizens, gov't agencies, or other corps. Sure, the megacorps essentially force their workers to buy everything from them, but in fact, a corp cannot grow this way nor can it sustain itself by this alone. Businesses MUST grow and adapt, or they will lose their market shares to new and upcoming businesses.
-Selling product is tough when your consumers can't afford to buy your product. In SR we focus a lot on the bottom-end of the food chain, because it's easier to hide there, and we spent all our resources on wired reflexes and muscle replacements (or magic priority). But in-fact. In order for this metaworld to function,there must be a healthy class of people with disposable income; and we cannot forget that shadowrunners really make up less than 1% of the population.
-There must be some sort of stable law enacted in order for businesses to grow to the point they have in the SR universe, especially when you consider the mass casualty events in the SR timeline.
-Extraterritoriality, while a huge deal for the corps themselves, and their employees, is a relatively small piece of the overall pie as far as nations are concerned. It allows corps to police their own property and do with it as they wish; but, there is still law that they must abide (or appear to abide) by, enforced by governments. If not, the whole house of cards falls down when people do what they want to do. LS and KE cannot police everyone.
-Cynicism says that when a corp gets caught with their hands in the jar, so to speak, all they would have to do is pull strings, deploy lawyers, and buy influence. Problem is, there are thousands of other corps doing the same thing, waiting to eliminate competition.
-If a corp is caught in a crime:
- They risk losing their bottom line and the ability to move product.
- They risk lawsuits.
- They risk law enforcement coming in and shutting them down.
- They risk prison time.
So in other words, there must be a power to write and enforce laws, provide security and a stable business environment; and be a ruling body beyond just a massive proxy tax collection agency for the corporations.
Just my .02.
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So basically, nations probably are mostly treated by megacorporations as a convenient way to gather consumers/taxpayers money for major contracts. Why bother trying to convince one hundred thousand persons in the UCAS to buy a new Ares Predator when you could simply convince three hundreds Congressmen to buy two new air carriers?
Why not do both? Nothing like a megacorp when it comes to multitasking. Sell the guns via Weapon World to the public, while the sales executives from Ares Arms wine and dine the congressmen.
Its really hard to define the society and how it all ties together. I think it works best if you maintain the modern day structure of society and the add megacorps over the top and sinless to the bottom rung. So for most business, which many are not directly affilitated with a megacorp, is business as usual. Pay your company tax every year to the feds, your local levys to the city council and your employees pay their income tax and rates as per usual. The Megacorps get to avoid all these, thus easily maintaining their advantage over the govs and lesser companies.
All this would of course imply that governments would be constantly underfunded compared to today and thus the balance sheet would be even worse. I would expect governments would struggle to make ends meet and services provided either directly or via contract, would be limited.
For example, I am surprised that the nations maintain anything more than a thin veneer of a standing military force, instead relying of sub-contracted mecernary units for security or special projects... but then that would make mecernary outfits the leading buyers of military gear, not govs. Unless you count token status items like a new sub or aircraft careair?
What are your thoughts?
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I think I need a degree to continue to follow this conversation. However, what Black said seems viable.
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For example, I am surprised that the nations maintain anything more than a thin veneer of a standing military force, instead relying of sub-contracted mecernary units for security or special projects... but then that would make mecernary outfits the leading buyers of military gear, not govs. Unless you count token status items like a new sub or aircraft careair?
What are your thoughts?
To a certain degree Governments will use merc units to augment the forces or fill niches, but there is a simple maxim about this:
Never turn over your primary military forces to forces for hire. What can be bought once, can be bought twice.
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That nations that rely solely on mercenaries for self-defense are going to be taken over by mercenaries at some point. In reality, one of the agreed on definitions for a nation has been a standing military of their own. An example would be similar to the Russian Navy under Catherine the Great. Due to a lack of skilled people to handle ships, the Russian Navy was mostly crewed by Irish mercenaries. They were to show up when ordered, and left to their own devices. Just about all the ships carried two flags. One identifying them as Russian naval vessels, and the other identifying them as pirates. Whenever the navy put in to port on Russian soil, the Russian army was there, fully loaded and expecting to have to kill the navy.
It doesn't matter how good they are, and what their record is. Mercenary troops are not trusted by most politicians. To be frank, in many places, most native soldiers are barely trusted by the politicians. It takes a carefully balanced society to have that level of trust, and by the description of the world and governments in the book, that level of trust is much more noted for the lack, rather than the existence. Look at everything Colloton went through after the New Revolution. She broke the New Revolution, but because she was military, people still think she had something to do with it.
Having a thin veneer of a standing military is fine and dandy, if there are no dangers out there. Unfortunately, there are quite a few dangers out there. Now, I freely admit I can see most governments subcontracting black ops. But that's mostly because more deniability is always a good thing.
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Two words on mercenaries: Executive Outcomes. ;)
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In 2072, a crack black ops unit was sent to prison by the UCAS military court for a crime they didn't commit.
These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Seattle Underground.
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The Adept-Team :P
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You do that game, too?
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In 2072, a crack black ops unit was sent to prison by the UCAS military court for a crime they didn't commit.
These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Seattle Underground.
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The Adept-Team :P
Lol I could totally visualize BA as a troll and Face as an elf....face.
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All this would of course imply that governments would be constantly underfunded compared to today and thus the balance sheet would be even worse. I would expect governments would struggle to make ends meet and services provided either directly or via contract, would be limited.
Well their budgets got a big bonus by denying services to anyone without a SIN number, which was the point. If you look at the US Budget, the big ticket items are always Entitlements and Defense spending. It's pretty clear there was massive cuts in both areas. It's not completely clear what services remain to SINners, but some of it is probaly taken over by their employers.
Lots of services are just out right provided by the Megacorporations. It's a public relations thing. Education, the Public Matrix Grid, and paper clothing and soy to the Barrens refugee camps for example are things they provide. Oh and some of the public health clinics are partially corporated funded, partially public. It's part of what makes the scenario kind of work. You can't literally have a bunch of starving refugees, because you'd soon have camps full of corpses. But wearing paper corporate branded clothing and eating tasteless soy sounds pretty nightmarish.
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They will have to completely dissolve the corporate court or expand it to regional power in each nation.....
That will give each nation an industrial shareholder's privliege of sorts. Like nationalization but for each and every nation. Corporations will spring up everywhere just to take advantage of the privliege status of being on their own regional corporate court.
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I keep seeing the same misunderstandings - that extraterritoriality means 'freedom from taxes', and 'we've got the bigger army', not to mention 'we can do anything we want' and 'only the corporations are First World countries'.
Way, way wrong.
The Seretech and Shiawase decisions stated that the corporations had the right to keep privatized military forces, to defend their property and territory by use of lethal force if they deemed it appropriate, to enforce corporate laws ahead of local and national laws, and to treat clearly-defined corporate territory as being corporate instead of national territory so long as events on corporate territory did not endanger citizens on the national territory. Discussions about this, what it meant, and how it impacted the world took place in Corporate Shadowfiles.
Nations still have vastly greater populations, larger militaries, more sizeable tax bases, and everything nations have over corporations today. The largest single corporate territory/population in the world was declared by the host nation null because events in it had the potential to vastly destroy territory and population in said host nation.
This doesn't mean the extraterritorial corporation doesn't have to pay taxes on their profits; it just means that they can avoid taxes by shunting the tax burden to other places where they pay a lower rate - or, by dint of influence, have none at all. Yes, 10 corporations control 25% or more of the world's wealth, and if any single one withdrew from certain nations, the economy in that nation would melt down - but the CAS, UCAS, many of the NAN states, and most of the European nations do not fall into that category. (Japan certainly didn't.)
But megacorporations still owe taxes in the countries where they have established facilities. The facilities may be extraterritorial, by which we mean 'under separate rule of law', but that doesn't make their earnings immune from taxation. Or, if a site stores explosives or dangerous chemicals, immune to being taken over (and hosed down) if disaster strikes and there's a danger to the houses across the street.
Or, tl;dr: don't think that 'extraterritoriality' means 'complete corporate freedom'.
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The whole concept of a corporation in Shadow run is doing 'whatever we want'.....
What does taxes matter when they control the entire production cycle. The whole system was inacted to control the entire Matrix and Awakened potentials solely for profit. and no other reason.
And there is no way to vote no confidence, there is no way to accuse any corporate member of a crime, there is no way defend yourself in a corporate legal system if you are accused of a crime by them.....
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I disagree. The whole concept of a corporation in Shadowrun is that it have something to fear if it gets caught doing something illegal. Otherwise it wouldn't hire deniable shadowrunners and we wouldn't get to play.
That "something" is not necessarily a trial in the local court of justice. Corporate Shadowfiles and subsequent corporate sourcebook rather point at the Corporate Court rule #2 "You break it, pay for it" as the main issue for megacorporations who don 't cover their track appropriately.
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I disagree. The whole concept of a corporation in Shadowrun is that it have something to fear if it gets caught doing something illegal. Otherwise it wouldn't hire deniable shadowrunners and we wouldn't get to play.
That "something" is not necessarily a trial in the local court of justice. Corporate Shadowfiles and subsequent corporate sourcebook rather point at the Corporate Court rule #2 "You break it, pay for it" as the main issue for megacorporations who don 't cover their track appropriately.
That 'something' illigal that is applied to the majority (more than 90%) of the population does not apply to the corporate system in Shadowrun. Thay have a process that punishes for not acting in their interests legality is not the primary agenda. Especially when it is not enjoyed by the genearal population...
The fact that a runner system even exist is to trivialize the constitutional law process in any area the corporate system is allowed operate.
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I disagree. The whole concept of a corporation in Shadowrun is that it have something to fear if it gets caught doing something illegal. Otherwise it wouldn't hire deniable shadowrunners and we wouldn't get to play.
That "something" is not necessarily a trial in the local court of justice. Corporate Shadowfiles and subsequent corporate sourcebook rather point at the Corporate Court rule #2 "You break it, pay for it" as the main issue for megacorporations who don 't cover their track appropriately.
That 'something' illigal that is applied to the majority (more than 90%) of the population does not apply to the corporate system in Shadowrun. Thay have a process that punishes for not acting in their interests legality is not the primary agenda. Especially when it is not enjoyed by the genearal population...
The fact that a runner system even exist is to trivialize the constitutional law process in any area the corporate system is allowed operate.
Sure, but is it an attitude of, "let the corps kill each other, as long as they leve the rest of us alone." If it is, then there must be some other agenda/responsibility when it comes to legitimate functions of government.
ETA: The flip-side of extraterritoriality is that the .gov no longer carries an obligation to get in the middle the corp's catfights. As long as they keep it off the street, the politicians and bureaucrats don't have to worry about getting beat-up by the media and their constituents. They can simply rake in tax money and maintain power.
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I agree with The Wyrm Ouroboros here. If corporations actually had 100%, complete undeniable control and power, they wouldn't need nations. They'd simply keep purchasing territory until they BECAME the nations.
They have small standing armies, yes, and the ability and capital to raise forces for a conflict zone, if they deem it profitable. But that's the key point here - profit. The difference between nations and corporations, at least ideologically, is what they strand for. Nations usually try to/pretend to have principles, and will go out of their way to stand up for those...at least some of the time. Yes, some of the time often means as little as they can get away with and still keep a positive public image, but I digress.
Corporations can be relied upon to look at the bottom line first. If they are making money, they'll do whatever they have to to continue to do so. If that means keeping people and nations happy, providing them with things they need and/or want, then so be it. A happy consumer is one that spends money to stay happy, so keeping people content(or at the least blissfully ignorant to their unhappiness) is in a corporation's best interest.
Now, as to extraterritoriality, I can't really explain better what has already been said. It makes sense that in a nation, for the privilege of being able to effectively control and police their own facilities and territory, they would have to pay taxes on said territory, based on a number of factors such as location, space, proximity to public areas and services, possible hazards in said territory, etc. Now, obviously if they're experimenting with explosive compounds or secret nanoviruses or something, they A) would likely not do it at a facility next to an elementary school, and B) would probably not let the public/nation know about it anyway, instead label and bill the facility as something much more innocuous. Hence, lower taxes.
Of course this assumes that the territory is only leased/rented from the government that owns it, and not purchased wholesale. But the reason I see this as more likely is because I think few first-world nations would allow a permanent purchase of land inside their own borders, that could potentially be used against them at a later date.
I see the territory thing much like a foreign embassy on political steroids. It's technically under control and jurisdiction of the group that "owns" it, but there ARE circumstances that could cause a megacorp to have that territory revoked. Like, say, if it became known that a facility in Philadelphia was doing highly illegal chemical testing on UCAS citizens without their consent or knowledge. Something like that would not only make the corporation lose a TON of money/consumers, but there would be a massive political shitstorm possibly up-to-and-including the corporate court/UCAS revoking said territory and kicking them out of that facility.
Anyways, /end rant. Just my perspective on things.
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I disagree. The whole concept of a corporation in Shadowrun is that it have something to fear if it gets caught doing something illegal. Otherwise it wouldn't hire deniable shadowrunners and we wouldn't get to play.
That "something" is not necessarily a trial in the local court of justice. Corporate Shadowfiles and subsequent corporate sourcebook rather point at the Corporate Court rule #2 "You break it, pay for it" as the main issue for megacorporations who don 't cover their track appropriately.
That 'something' illigal that is applied to the majority (more than 90%) of the population does not apply to the corporate system in Shadowrun. Thay have a process that punishes for not acting in their interests legality is not the primary agenda. Especially when it is not enjoyed by the genearal population...
The fact that a runner system even exist is to trivialize the constitutional law process in any area the corporate system is allowed operate.
Sure, but is it an attitude of, "let the corps kill each other, as long as they leve the rest of us alone." If it is, then there must be some other agenda/responsibility when it comes to legitimate functions of government.
ETA: The flip-side of extraterritoriality is that the .gov no longer carries an obligation to get in the middle the corp's catfights. As long as they keep it off the street, the politicians and bureaucrats don't have to worry about getting beat-up by the media and their constituents. They can simply rake in tax money and maintain power.
The legitimate responsibility of any government is to the people they govern.
Weather they have any infuence over another nation/state/group or not. If they have no influence then it is either open hostility, nogiation or simply as you said, 'let them kill each other'....
What is not being addressed is the failure of the governments/corporate courts to govern the general population. Primarily being casused by the corporate courts dominate position of their own interests.
Hence the existance of sprawls, armed runners and gangs roaming the streets and ecological disasters making most the the shadowrun world uninhabitable on its surface.
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Shadowrun corporations don't enact law and don't apply them before the local government or the Corporate Court give them the right to do so
Uh huh, so your whole concept of statehood hinges on the question whether an entity was first recognized by an international/-corporate body and then enacted its own laws or vice versa. While certainly creative, this is not exactly the scientific consensus.
Or, tl;dr: don't think that 'extraterritoriality' means 'complete corporate freedom'.
TL:DR: "Extraterritorial" means "not on the nations soil any more". Corps are not like diplomatic missions, which are exempted from the host nation's laws by international treaties but otherwise still inside that nation. They have their own territory, laws, population, currency, ability to enter in international dealings (like letting the UCAS clean out their arcology), and everything else required by any statehood theory (except Nath's, admittedly).
And indeed that means nation states are pretty shitty places, all they govern are the poor masses which the corps have no interest in and the companies which have are not (yet) big enough to start their own gig. Welcome to cyberpunk.
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And indeed that means nation states are pretty shitty places, all they govern are the poor masses which the corps have no interest in and the companies which have are not (yet) big enough to start their own gig. Welcome to cyberpunk.
Yes cyberpunk is supposed to be dystopian; however, it gets to be so focused on one viewpoint (corporations are bad, m'kay) that it ignores that there is a bigger world, and reality is far more nuanced and detailed. The relationship in the SR metaverse between government, corporations and the greater populace is something that needs to be explored IMO.
ETA: Some of the best dystopian science fiction ever written (Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, etc) is focused on the greater control of the masses.
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Take into consideration the voices used for the books, however. Maybe this will change with the novels, which can be in any voice.
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Shadowrun corporations don't enact law and don't apply them before the local government or the Corporate Court give them the right to do so
Uh huh, so your whole concept of statehood hinges on the question whether an entity was first recognized by an international/-corporate body and then enacted its own laws or vice versa. While certainly creative, this is not exactly the scientific consensus.
I wasn't discussing whether megacorporations could be considered state or not, I was discussing whether megacorporations can be considered sovereign. Statehood does not imply sovereignty, hence why sovereign is used as an adjective to qualify some states.
I also never referred to the Corporate Court as "recognizing" a megacorporation, moreover in the meaning of "diplomatic recognition". What the Corporate Court does is:
- rates corporations as A, AA or AAA
- requires all BRA signatory states to comply with the treaty, which means not enforcing local laws and regulations inside AA and AAA facilities that match the criterions set by local regulation, and accepting AA and AAA-issued SIN.
It is the Corporate Court rating and threats that makes it possible in the first place for a megacorporation to ignore local laws and freely makes up it own (I say "freely" because otherwise, any corporation can even nowadays enact "laws" to forbid wearing tie on Friday, or attribute parking spaces, or whatever).
You could have had a legitimate objection and compare this to the case of protectorate, established under the protection of the Corporate Court but obtaining sovereignty nonetheless. I disagree because the existing agreements between the corporation, the Corporate Court and the signatory countries provide the corporations' authority can be restricted or ended, which precludes sovereignty and only established autonomy.
The Corporate Court can downgrade a megacorporation to A rating at any time (it happened to Spinrad Industries, it almost happened to Kondorchid in Ghost Cartels). A government can change its local regulation regarding extraterritoriality (like the much more restrictive versions in effect in Quebec and Switzerland).
If that happens, and a megacorporation shows its willingness to ignore the Corporate Court and/or the government decision and its capability to successfully repel any attempt to enforce national law, then, yes, it will have demonstrated sovereignty.
But SR lore contains so far no reference I know of to any megacorporation ever doing that in a single country, let alone in every countries it has assets in at once (while it contains at least two cases of AAA submitting to national decisions and returning their "territory").
Besides, I expect the Corporate Court to want its decision to be meaningful, and thus promptly makes sure that if it says a corporation should no longer benefit from extraterritoriality, it likely won't let it clinge on that privilege for long.
TL:DR: "Extraterritorial" means "not on the nations soil any more". Corps are not like diplomatic missions, which are exempted from the host nation's laws by international treaties but otherwise still inside that nation. They have their own territory, laws, population, currency, ability to enter in international dealings (like letting the UCAS clean out their arcology), and everything else required by any statehood theory (except Nath's, admittedly).
"Extraterritorial" actually only means "outside the territory", which has two different uses. The first use covers the application of a state's law outside its territory (such as judging pirates for act committed in international waters). The second use covers persons or places that are considered to be outside the territory for the application of law (thus usually not subject to it).
If you go for strict etymology, it doesn't refer at all to nation. If you go for the actual definition, it doesn't refer to soil, but to territory at large, including territorial waters.
The key part is what is not in the definition. Extraterritorial does not mean "outside one territory and inside another". Extraterritoriality is not annexation. The state that grants extraterritoriality to a part of its territory does retain sovereignty, denying the beneficiary from claiming it.
The very fact that all corporate holdings are referred to as extraterritorial and just as territory would actually imply that corporations do not have any of the territory required by some definition of statehood.
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Or, tl;dr: don't think that 'extraterritoriality' means 'complete corporate freedom'.
TL:DR: "Extraterritorial" means "not on the nations soil any more". Corps are not like diplomatic missions, which are exempted from the host nation's laws by international treaties but otherwise still inside that nation. They have their own territory, laws, population, currency, ability to enter in international dealings (like letting the UCAS clean out their arcology), and everything else required by any statehood theory (except Nath's, admittedly).
And indeed that means nation states are pretty shitty places, all they govern are the poor masses which the corps have no interest in and the companies which have are not (yet) big enough to start their own gig. Welcome to cyberpunk.
... you're kidding, right? 'Exempted from' is precisely what it means. Are you saying France doesn't have its own territory, laws, population, currency, and ability to enter into international dealings, and that the extraterritorial embassy just up the street isn't precisely the same? AA and AAA corporations are intensely interested in those 'poor masses' - because those 'poor masses' are where they make their money. That's the consumer base for them.
Renraku didn't 'allow' the UCAS Army to 'clean out' the Arcology; the Army walked in on a meeting of the Metroplex Corporate Council and said, "We're in charge here now. Turn that recorder off." The UCAS took it over, because it had three nuclear devices in the basement that were no longer under Renraku's control. It was only after Crash 2.0 that Renraku looked at the profit/loss margin on the place and said, "We're going to default on the pay-back for cleaning house there, and surrender it to you. TTFN."
Extraterritoriality holds a meaning equivalent to 'by my nation's laws until we're doing something that threatens the host nation's people'. Not doing the latter is implicit in the extraterritoriality agreement, and proving that they have is in part what shadowrunners hired by a corporate agency do. Shiawase is storing toxic material inappropriately at their Los Bathos facility? Have the EPA hire shadowrunners to get proof. Likewise, if a corporate facility is selling to the host nation's individuals, it is supposed to pay taxes to the host nation on the profit made - but corporations claim all sorts of things, which means the IRS hires shadowrunners (or just its own agents) to go in and get documented proof about how much profit is being made by a site, regional HQ, whatever.
This doesn't mean I think that nations are the big dogs in the Shadowrun world; they aren't. This is why we always have a Corporate book first, and a nations book if we get around to it. But the dystopia of cyberpunk is less 'corporations control' than it is 'the top 0.01% of the social strata controls'. Or do you think that corporate sweatshops don't still exist, and that the AA- and AAA-rated corporations somehow treat their lowest-level citizens any better (or much better) than the A-rated corp down the road?
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So the Shadowrun world setting is not a crappy place to live. And corporations are pro populace?
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They have to be somewhat, if no one has any money or everybody just plain hates the corps they'll end up losing in the end. An admittedly not perfect example is look how people turned on Ares after the Excalibur.
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They have to be somewhat, if no one has any money or everybody just plain hates the corps they'll end up losing in the end. An admittedly not perfect example is look how people turned on Ares after the Excalibur.
I will admit overall they are more democratic, if even just a bit so than than eairler in the timeline. But it's my opinion that it is due to Nations operating to make the relationship more so.
The PCC's National Corporate Caucus system is a unique approach im interested in roleplaying a drama within...
Is it a coincidence that they share a border with the UCAS who has been accused of being a bit too middle of the road dealing with corporations?
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TL:DR: "Extraterritorial" means "not on the nations soil any more". Corps are not like diplomatic missions, which are exempted from the host nation's laws by international treaties but otherwise still inside that nation. They have their own territory, laws, population, currency, ability to enter in international dealings (like letting the UCAS clean out their arcology), and everything else required by any statehood theory (except Nath's, admittedly).
... you're kidding, right? 'Exempted from' is precisely what it means. Are you saying France doesn't have its own territory, laws, population, currency, and ability to enter into international dealings, and that the extraterritorial embassy just up the street isn't precisely the same?
As far as I understand, what he meant is that corporate extraterritorial enclaves are different diplomatic extraterritorial enclaves, because the former gives to megacorporations things that the latter doesn't give to other entities.
Indeed, an entity indeed must have at least the ability to enter in international dealings prior to getting a diplomatic extraterritorial enclaves. States already having a population, a territory and all the other attribute of statehood before getting any diplomatic enclaves, the comparison would be pointless. Entities that do get the ability to enter in international dealings without having a territory or a population beforehand are called international organizations. Which also have laws (albeit not sovereign law) and can issue travel documents to a population of employees. They could probably have a currency if they wanted to (as any group of two persons can). They don't have a territory, and claiming sovereignty over the extraterritorial enclave that has been granted to them would trigger a diplomatic crisis.
An entity that gets a corporate extraterritorial enclaves may not need the ability to enter in international dealings, since the status has been negotiated between the host nation and the Corporate Court. It can have laws. It can issue travel documents to a population of employees, and can have a currency. And for some reasons, Sengir considers that it can and does claim corporate extraterritorial enclave as its sovereign territory.
So as far as I can understand his line of reasoning, corporate extraterritorial enclaves must be different from diplomatic extraterritorial enclaves because they are sovereign territories.
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I wasn't discussing whether megacorporations could be considered state or not, I was discussing whether megacorporations can be considered sovereign. Statehood does not imply sovereignty, hence why sovereign is used as an adjective to qualify some states.
"Sovereign" is used to differ these states from members of a commonwealth or union. Basically, if the state can handle its international dealings by itself (which basically means "it does and others accept it"), it's sovereign. Do extraterritorial corps do that? Well, I can't remember anthing saying that corps always need to take the detour over the CC. And even if they did, that would basically make "The Corps" a sovereign state, and individual corps members of the union.
and that the extraterritorial embassy just up the street isn't precisely the same?
Embassies/diplomatic missions are not extraterritorial. The "organization" is exempted from local laws, but that does not make it separate territory. Think of it like renting a house: Your landlord probably does not have the right to enter it, but that does not make you the owner and your lease can be terminated.
And I'm at loss where you got the idea that I claimed a nation state does not posses territory, populace, etc..
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"Sovereign" is used to differ these states from members of a commonwealth or union. Basically, if the state can handle its international dealings by itself (which basically means "it does and others accept it"), it's sovereign. Do extraterritorial corps do that? Well, I can't remember anthing saying that corps always need to take the detour over the CC. And even if they did, that would basically make "The Corps" a sovereign state, and individual corps members of the union.
Multinational corporations can, even nowadays, also engage in commercial contracts with sovereign states that don't qualify as international treaties. The agreement between Knight Errant and Seattle for law enforcement for instance, must be a commercial contract (as if it was a treaty, only the UCAS federal government could have signed it).
One thing that cannot be covered by a commercial contract is the extradition process. But it's not specified if each megacorporation and each nation needs to sign their own extradition accord, or if the Business Recognition Accords covered it once for all megacorporations.
However, this does not imply sovereignty. International organizations can also enter international treaties, and are not considered sovereign. The International Criminal Court can for instance require extradition from state parties.
The differential diagnosis would be that if it can enter international treaties and has a territory, it's a sovereign state ; if it can enter treaties but has no territory, it's an international organization.
But to complicate things a bit, there actually one case of a sovereign international organization, that does not have territory: the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (which has treaties, diplomatic missions and issue passports, and at some point even had an air force, though its actual control over it could be questioned).
To me, the ability that states retain to alter which area qualify for corporate extraterritoriality (and effectively do so in several occasions) precludes those from being considered as corporate sovereign territory.
It would make more sense for megacorporations to be considered as sovereign organizations like the Order of Malta. To me, the main issue remains that the Corporate Court charter a corporation must have adhered to obtain megacorporate status contain provisions for it to be revoked. "Temporary sovereignty" would be odd as a legal concept, to say the least.
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Being considered Svoereign has little to do with having anything but a group of people wishing some form of basic rights for themselves .All they have to do is ask. Then the community they live in is now sovereign.
The entity they exist within then can allow them to apply for 'state' status based on intent for the host nation. but the former is all that is needed to have a treaty or at least an agreement to have a treaty.
Corps wishing higher status, devised a plan making them an entity above all nations. First by devising their own laws (coporate court) giving themselves an international jurisdiction over members.
Taking over printing of money, establishing coporate zones, wtih private schools, police stations, etc, .... never having to ask for sovereign status since the operated within nations as a corporation already.
Then applied for extraterrtorial status never having to apply to any individual nation for statehood or state for sovereign status. since they had their own territory(enclaves, zones, etc..) and constitutional law (corporate court).
All based on their plan for higher profit margins....
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Multinational corporations can, even nowadays, also engage in commercial contracts with sovereign states that don't qualify as international treaties.
Sure, because these corporations lack any other attribute of a state.
To me, the ability that states retain to alter which area qualify for corporate extraterritoriality (and effectively do so in several occasions) precludes those from being considered as corporate sovereign territory.
The UCAS strongarmed their way into the Arcology and Raku was nice enough to let them take care of the disaster area, while secretly working to get their hands on all the stuff that really mattered (like Deus). Sounds like a piece of international politics. And revoking recognition? We've been over the ROC already, haven't we?
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You should also give an explanation for that one:
Shadows of North America, page 91
> Last year the PCC made new by revoking Aztechnology's operating licenses for all of their Pueblo facilities and canceling policies for Aztechnology facilities and subsidiaries within Pueblo only months after Aztlan had been booted out of Denver. The Azzies had been on "show cause" probation for about eight or nine years already. The Azzies were told to vamoose in six months, but they've been dragging their feet in packing up.
> Pyramid Watcher
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The answer maybe one page up from what you quoted: All the does is hand out temporary licenses to do business there uninterrupted. Yes, the authors subsumed this under "extraterritoriality", just like they did with embassies...
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You mean this part that describes what the operating license does?
Shadows of North America, page 90
The main restriction is that all extraterritorial corporations must have an operating license to function on Pueblo lands; in effect, they're paying Pueblo for the privilege of extraterritoriality.
Sure, sometimes Shadowrun authors are wrong. They can also sometimes not write what they actually meant.
It's quite convenient that all canon sources that would show megacorporations are not sovereign happens to be wrong or misunderstood, while all the sources that... no, wait, what sources did you gave to back up your claim?
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It's quite convenient that all canon sources that would show megacorporations are not sovereign
...are at best anecdotal, whereas the the evidence for megacorps having all the attributes and titles of souvereign states are not along the lines of "well there was this one obscure case where a guy was actually considered a citizen of the company he worked for...".
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... so ... if I understand you correctly, Sengir, you claim that the RL authors got extraterritoriality wrong for embassies (the permissions and allowances for which are generally considered to be the definition of what it means to be extraterritorial) but got it right for corporate properties ... ??
... how's that work, again?
and that the extraterritorial embassy just up the street isn't precisely the same?
Embassies/diplomatic missions are not extraterritorial. The "organization" is exempted from local laws, but that does not make it separate territory. Think of it like renting a house: Your landlord probably does not have the right to enter it, but that does not make you the owner and your lease can be terminated.
And I'm at loss where you got the idea that I claimed a nation state does not posses territory, populace, etc..
You implied (strongly) that a nation-state does not &c. when you stated that embassies (please note that I did not state 'diplomatic missions') were not considered extraterritorial - which AFAIK is the singular current global use of the term, though it includes packages proceeding in the hands of an embassy courier to and from the host country, that courier's person, the ambassador, and the ambassador's official vehicle. Yes, they can all be kicked out, but while they exist they and the land is considered part of the other nation's territory - which is what extraterritorial means, 'out of the (host nation's) territory'.
Your use of the landlord/tenant phrasing, however, is precisely what I mean when I speak of extraterritoriality - and which was precisely what happened with the SCIRE/ACHE when Deus took the damn thing over. The landlord showed up, said "You're cooking meth in here, that's damn well dangerous to all the other tenants, GTFO!!" and took over the situation - and, technically, the property - while giving Renraku the option to purchase it back for costs.
In short, you got it all precisely correct, but you don't realize it -- and in fact you're arguing that a) national and corporate extraterritoriality in SR are different and b) that those who claim otherwise are wrong.
So ... slap yourself a bit and realize that extraterritoriality means just exactly what you say it does and what I'm saying it does, and that it really is nations that get to decide whether or not and to what extent they're going to be signatories to the Universal Business Accords, eh?
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... so ... if I understand you correctly, Sengir, you claim that the RL authors got extraterritoriality wrong for embassies (the permissions and allowances for which are generally considered to be the definition of what it means to be extraterritorial) but got it right for corporate properties ... ??
... how's that work, again?
and that the extraterritorial embassy just up the street isn't precisely the same?
Embassies/diplomatic missions are not extraterritorial. The "organization" is exempted from local laws, but that does not make it separate territory. Think of it like renting a house: Your landlord probably does not have the right to enter it, but that does not make you the owner and your lease can be terminated.
And I'm at loss where you got the idea that I claimed a nation state does not posses territory, populace, etc..
You implied (strongly) that a nation-state does not &c. when you stated that embassies (please note that I did not state 'diplomatic missions') were not considered extraterritorial - which AFAIK is the singular current global use of the term, though it includes packages proceeding in the hands of an embassy courier to and from the host country, that courier's person, the ambassador, and the ambassador's official vehicle. Yes, they can all be kicked out, but while they exist they and the land is considered part of the other nation's territory - which is what extraterritorial means, 'out of the (host nation's) territory'.
Your use of the landlord/tenant phrasing, however, is precisely what I mean when I speak of extraterritoriality - and which was precisely what happened with the SCIRE/ACHE when Deus took the damn thing over. The landlord showed up, said "You're cooking meth in here, that's damn well dangerous to all the other tenants, GTFO!!" and took over the situation - and, technically, the property - while giving Renraku the option to purchase it back for costs.
In short, you got it all precisely correct, but you don't realize it -- and in fact you're arguing that a) national and corporate extraterritoriality in SR are different and b) that those who claim otherwise are wrong.
So ... slap yourself a bit and realize that extraterritoriality means just exactly what you say it does and what I'm saying it does, and that it really is nations that get to decide whether or not and to what extent they're going to be signatories to the Universal Business Accords, eh?
Slap yourself..... ;D
Well nations are getting more intolerant of the coporate structure and its dominance. So It's natural that steps be made, by a Nation, to balance power against the corps.....
The PCC and Aztlan are good examples....
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The problem with using Aztlan in that example is that Aztechnology is the main reason Aztlan exists.
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The problem with using Aztlan in that example is that Aztechnology is the main reason Aztlan exists.
Not a problem I think, here is why.....
All nations in Shadowrun owe their current borders, political situations, economic situations to the corporations but....
Aztechnology took the oppoturnity to form a national identity, corporate structure by taking/assuming a geographical area as their responsibility. Effectively, at first, discouraging all other corps from sharing out Atlan among each other. A reverse nationalization....
hey
did the person who started the topic leave? looks like someone else took ownership....
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LOL no, I've been reading every post. ;)
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The problem with using Aztlan in that example is that Aztechnology is the main reason Aztlan exists.
Not a problem I think, here is why.....
All nations in Shadowrun owe their current borders, political situations, economic situations to the corporations but....
Aztechnology took the oppoturnity to form a national identity, corporate structure by taking/assuming a geographical area as their responsibility. Effectively, at first, discouraging all other corps from sharing out Atlan among each other. A reverse nationalization....
hey
did the person who started the topic leave? looks like someone else took ownership....
ALL nations? Even the ones that had their territory and borders before the CC was a thing? Even the ones that aren't amenable to the ways and means of the corps?
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Who's borders has not changed since before the Corporate Court?
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The problem with using Aztlan in that example is that Aztechnology is the main reason Aztlan exists.
Not a problem I think, here is why.....
All nations in Shadowrun owe their current borders, political situations, economic situations to the corporations but....
Aztechnology took the oppoturnity to form a national identity, corporate structure by taking/assuming a geographical area as their responsibility. Effectively, at first, discouraging all other corps from sharing out Atlan among each other. A reverse nationalization....
hey
did the person who started the topic leave? looks like someone else took ownership....
Actually. OrO (the corp name before the Aztec revival movement took hold in South America) used its clout with the government to nationalize the business sector of South America.... Basically they "took" all the businesses and told the megacorps "F••k y•u!!! Ours now!!" which sparked the first time (arguably) an Omega Order had ever been issued...
The other Megacorps of the day basically ganged up and dealt OrO/aztechology a huge slap on hand that brought them running to talk.... But what no one can figure out (SR history mystery) is why Aztechnology was allowed to keep everything they took, and that the other megas where only allowed subsidery companies in aztlan/south America......
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Who's borders has not changed since before the Corporate Court?
Most countries borders changed well before the CC was even formed....
The VITAS plagues caused A LOT of upheaval.... And what it didn't cause, UGE, goblinization and the awakening did....
The first true show of force by the CC was the arguable Omega Order on ORO/Aztechnology.... And from there their power grew rapidly.
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Who's borders has not changed since before the Corporate Court?
A fair few, I imagine (most of the events that caused border shifts predate the Court) - and most border shifts I can think of had NOTHING to do with the Corps. Tír na nÓg, for example, seems to have had its borders since about 2014.
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Who's borders has not changed since before the Corporate Court?
Most countries borders changed well before the CC was even formed....
The VITAS plagues caused A LOT of upheaval.... And what it didn't cause, UGE, goblinization and the awakening did....
The first true show of force by the CC was the arguable Omega Order on ORO/Aztechnology.... And from there their power grew rapidly.
That and the events in France. But it was power which grew over time and the Omega Order was the first overt sign of power.
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Who's borders has not changed since before the Corporate Court?
Most countries borders changed well before the CC was even formed....
The VITAS plagues caused A LOT of upheaval.... And what it didn't cause, UGE, goblinization and the awakening did....
The first true show of force by the CC was the arguable Omega Order on ORO/Aztechnology.... And from there their power grew rapidly.
Corporate Courts and the issue of Extraterritoriality are dated initially around 2001.
Well before VITAS and later events....
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You have to remember, there are a few checks and balances on the Corp Court....
First, you need a majority vote.... Which isn't easy to get unless the vote is on something that will benefit most of the voters.... Which means plans that help ONLY Ares grow and limit other Megas will never get passed.
Second, taking over a country is not in a corporations best interest (look into the current state of affairs of ALL countries.... Heck Sony LOST more money this year then the GDP of the bottom 20 countries!!) Running a country is not the same as running a business, you have different priorities... And they conflict big time!!
••••
However, it IS in the CC's best interest to make sure that countries treat their signatories favorably, while limiting the competion's ability to challenge them. (ie: anyone not a Mega)
So this would include things like recgrognizing extraterritorial powers, fixed corp tax rates, travel and right-of-way protocols, and anything else they can use to make their growth and profits easier.
Their ARE limits to extraterritoriality. First, it extends to ONLY corps that are AA rated and above (and even then, it has to be granted by the CC...) Second, it only applies to THAT corp... Meaning that while Ares has extraterritoriality, Johnson&simmiens (an Ares subsidery) isn't protected. Thirdly, you have to broadcast your extraterritoriality astrally, physically, and digitally.... Which means that secret Ares resarch lab in the barrens IS NOT covered! Lastly, you have NO authority off corp property.... So the moment Ares security steps foot off ares land, they could be breaking local laws just by having a sidearm.... And be arrested/charged! Also, anything that leaves your property that causes damage is your responsibility... So while dumping toxic chemicals is perfectly legal on Ares land... Once those toxins reach UCAS land, Ares is on the hook!
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Who's borders has not changed since before the Corporate Court?
Most countries borders changed well before the CC was even formed....
The VITAS plagues caused A LOT of upheaval.... And what it didn't cause, UGE, goblinization and the awakening did....
The first true show of force by the CC was the arguable Omega Order on ORO/Aztechnology.... And from there their power grew rapidly.
Corporate Courts and the issue of Extraterritoritality are dated initially around 2001.
Well before VITAS and later events....
actually no.
a history of events is below:
1999: a strike causes a food shortage in Manhatten, leading to a Seretech medical waste transport coming under attack by citizens looking for food.... 200 citizens and 20 Seretech employees dead. The US supreme court sides with Seretech and "agrees" that they are with in their rights to hire, train, and use private security (military) forces for the protection of Corporate assets.
2000: Shiawase wins a Supremem court victory allowing them to privately build, own and maintain a nuclear power reactor for their own use.
2001: Shaiwase is granted Extraterritoriality by the US supreme court after a Terra-First! attack on their nuclear station is thwarted by Shaiwase private security.
2010: VITAS 1 outbreak.
2011: the AWAKENING!!! (UGE and magic come back!)
2012: BMW, Ares, Shaiwase, ORO, Keruba, jRj, Mitsuhama form the ICC (inter-corporate council)
2013: the ICC fails to stop a war between ORO and Keruba
2015: Azatlan party comes to power in Mexico. Renames Mexico Aztlan.
2021: Goblinization!!!
2022: VITAS 2:
2023: Ares Industries, ORO, BMW, JRJ International, Keruba International, Mitsuhama, Shiawase Form the Corporate Court
all this and more is available in the Sixth World Almanac and Corporate guide.
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... so ... if I understand you correctly, Sengir, you claim that the RL authors got extraterritoriality wrong for embassies (the permissions and allowances for which are generally considered to be the definition of what it means to be extraterritorial)
In other words, after being told otherwise several times in this thread, you still did not get the fact that embassies (and any other diplomatic mission) are not extraterritorial but merely granted immunity by international conventions?
I'm afraid if you fail at that basic level, there is little I can do to further your understanding...
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Diplomats and their people are given immunity for crimes committed outside the embassy. An embassy is considered sovereign territory of the government that sponsors it. That means the Russian Embassy in the US is considered Russian soil, and the US Embassy in Russia is American soil. That pretty much is the definition of extraterritoriality.
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... so ... if I understand you correctly, Sengir, you claim that the RL authors got extraterritoriality wrong for embassies (the permissions and allowances for which are generally considered to be the definition of what it means to be extraterritorial)
In other words, after being told otherwise several times in this thread, you still did not get the fact that embassies (and any other diplomatic mission) are not extraterritorial but merely granted immunity by international conventions?
I'm afraid if you fail at that basic level, there is little I can do to further your understanding...
Hmmm. I'm going to do what you utterly failed to do, and quote sources.
Extraterritorial (adjective):
- (of a law or decree) valid outside a country’s territory: an extraterritorial decree of assassination from abroad[/i
- denoting the freedom of embassy staff from the jurisdiction of the territory of residence: foreign embassies have extraterritorial rights
- situated outside a country’s territory: extraterritorial industrial zones
Extraterritoriality (noun): exemption from the application or jurisdiction of local law or tribunals.
Extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Extraterritoriality can also be applied to physical places, such as foreign embassies, military bases of foreign countries, or offices of the United Nations. The three most common cases recognized today internationally relate to the persons and belongings of foreign heads of state, the persons and belongings of ambassadors and other diplomats, and ships in foreign waters.
Extraterritoriality is often extended to friendly or allied militaries, particularly for the purposes of allowing that military to simply pass through one's territory.
Now, this is common usage. Your argument resides on the technical definition, which I'll again pull from Wikipedia:Contrary to popular belief, diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state. Rather, the premises of diplomatic missions remain under the jurisdiction of the host state while being afforded special privileges (such as immunity from most local laws) by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Diplomats themselves still retain full diplomatic immunity, and (as an adherent to the Vienna Convention) the host country may not enter the premises of the mission without permission of the represented country. The term "extraterritoriality" is often applied to diplomatic missions, but only in this broader sense.
As the host country may not enter the representing country's embassy without permission, embassies are sometimes used by refugees escaping from either the host country or a third country. For example, North Korean nationals, who would be arrested and deported from China upon discovery, have sought sanctuary at various third-country embassies in China. Once inside the embassy, diplomatic channels can be used to solve the issue and send the refugees to another country.
So yes, you are absolutely correct - going by precise technicality, embassies (meaning the building, i.e. the chancery) are, shall we say, 'common tier' extraterritorial, and not 'precision tier' extraterritorial. However, the demonstrated meaning of 'extraterritoriality' in SR walks between both tiers - in many instances 'common tier' use, in some the 'precision tier' use of the term. Many/most SR extraterritorial corporate locations are even still supposed to pay taxes (p. 20 sidebar, Corporate Guide (4e)) into the local government, due to use of infrastructure. Buuuut ...
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Extraterritorial really just is an adjective that means "outside the territory". Which has two different and opposed, though sometimes related, uses in legal parlance.
When a country exercises its authority outside its territory, it creates an extraterritorial jurisdiction. When a country treats a part of its territory or a person present on its territory as if it wasn't inside its territory, it grants an extraterritorial privilege. Originally, the latter case was also called "exterritoriality" in the past, but the term fell into disuse.
It is a common misconception that foreign embassies and consulates have extraterritorial privilege. The diplomatic personnel have diplomatic immunity, while the diplomatic missions and vehicles have diplomatic inviolability. That is, the person cannot be arrested or imprisoned, the places and vehicles cannot be searched.
In this day and age, it is not so rare for democratic countries to waive their diplomats' immunity for cases that are not related to their duties, like car accidents.
Diplomatic immunity can practically amount to an extraterritorial privilege in a given situation. When the local authorities don't even start a legal procedure because they know immunity or inviolability will get in their way, they effectively grant an extraterritorial privilege. It is not what the Vienna Convention ask for, but this what the results may be.
Foreign governments and the convention don't require it for a reason: the extraterritorial privilege is a double-edged sword. If you punch someone in the face inside the country, you cannot be charged because you weren't there. But if you get punched, the other person also cannot be charged because you weren't there.
The extraterritorial privilege still exists in some places though: the facilities belonging to international organizations are often granted it. That's the case for the UN or NATO headquarters for instance, or some buildings that belongs to the Catholic Church inside Rome.
Why not just resort to diplomatic immunity and inviolability? For NATO headquarters, it's because military personnel involved in the planning and execution of war operations don't qualify as diplomatic personnel. For the UN, it was to account for diplomats from countries which have no diplomatic relationships with or aren't recognize by the United States.
What prevent these places to be plagued with crime is extraterritoriality... the other one, the extraterritorial jurisdiction. Historically, your typical case is piracy inside international waters. A ship inside international waters is considered an extraterritorial jurisdiction of the country it carries the flag, so pirate crew boarding it can be charged and prosecuted there.
When an US Army officer is charged for murder committed in Iraq or inside the NATO headquarters in Belgium, it establishes an extraterritorial jurisdiction. A lot of countries actually allow themselves to try their citizens for crime they committed abroad. Some also allow themselves to try foreigners for crime they committed against one of their citizens abroad. And there are more disputed cases, like the US charging a Swiss company for dealing with the Iranian government that physically took place in Zurich and Tehran.
So, yes a place can have the extraterritorial privilege and also be an extraterritorial jurisdiction at the same time, and from the same country (in the case of a crime committed inside the UN headquarters for instance, it is considered as being outside US territory, but subject to US laws).
Extraterritorial jurisdiction are considered on a case by case basis. If you take a look at those "anecdotal evidences" that jurists usually call "precedents", the Fourth Circuit ruled that an US embassy is an extraterritorial jurisdiction for manslaughter in United States versus Erdos (http://openjurist.org/474/f2d/157), but the Supreme Court ruled that an US embassy was not for a civilian lawsuit against a foreign state in Persinger versus Islamic Republic of Iran (http://openjurist.org/729/f2d/835/persinger-v-islamic-republic-of-iran).
An US embassy is not actual US territory, it is a "special territorial jurisdiction of the United States". Some US laws apply, some don't, some do differently (in US v. Erdos, much of the debate was about where the trial should take place for instance). But this is because the US legal systems allow extraterritorial jurisdiction. The Russian may have a different opinion on what happens inside their embassies. Depending on the local practice of law, some other countries may rule extraterritorial jurisdiction as legally impossible, and their embassies thus effectively are lawless zones.
More important, things may be different as well in Shadowrun, which as a game tend to be closer to "Hollywood reality" than "legal reality". The foreign diplomat getting away with murder is a staple afterall.
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The Corporate Court extraterritoriality is very similar to the diplomatic version. Just swap "Vienna Convention" with "Corporate Court" and you're pretty good to go. The land still belongs to the country, but special concessions are allowed.
However, keep in mind that the Shadowrun writers believed in the cinematic version of extraterritoriality, in which the consulate facilities are the sovereign territory of the country in question. See Corporate Shadowfiles, p. 19. There's been riders and exemptions attached to this over time (including within Corporate Shadowfiles) so you are free to interpret this as you want -- you'll probably be right given the various book descriptions :)
BTW I suggest turning your brain off for the explanation of how this all came about though. It makes my brain hurt reading the justification for the Shiawase decisions.
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Hmmm. I'm going to do what you utterly failed to do, and quote sources.
Always a good idea if you claim something exists...
However, the demonstrated meaning of 'extraterritoriality' in SR walks between both tiers - in many instances 'common tier' use, in some the 'precision tier' use of the term. Many/most SR extraterritorial corporate locations are even still supposed to pay taxes (p. 20 sidebar, Corporate Guide (4e)) into the local government, due to use of infrastructure. Buuuut ...
The Vienna Conventions aka. your "common tier", include a lot of restrictions. You might descibe it as "extraterritoriality except for being not really extraterritorial and the following...". So if what SR meant with "extraterritoriality" was indeed a combination between "really extraterritorial" and "immunity by treaty", some of those restrictions should be present. Such as:
- New head of mission has to be accepted by host nation
- Citizens of the host nation may only become members of the mission if the host nation agrees
- People may be declared persona non grata, realations may be severed entirely
- "The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage". I'd say the whole point of SR extraterritoriality was that corps should care for their own security
- "the mission may install and use a wireless transmitter only with the consent of the receiving State".
- No commercial activity
As far as taxes are concerned, what CG describes sounds more like direct payment for services delivered than what you and I pay as taxes, But anyway, using taxes as an argument why megacorps are like embassies and not like exclaves does not work for a simple reason: Embassies are exempt from taxation and customs for anything related to their official purposes (which for a megacorp would obviously be "make money")..
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Make money, also printing money then pay taxes with said monies....
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Make money, also printing money then pay taxes with said monies....
Printing money is always a bad idea unless your plan is to devalue your debt.
Corps still pay taxes, its just minimised. Not too dissimilar to modern day. They just have more tools at reducing their exposure to taxes.
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Make money, also printing money then pay taxes with said monies....
Printing money is always a bad idea unless your plan is to devalue your debt.
Corps still pay taxes, its just minimised. Not too dissimilar to modern day. They just have more tools at reducing their exposure to taxes.
Yep, just like governments have ways of getting said money (VAT, Sin, Excise, PF, etc taxes)
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Make money, also printing money then pay taxes with said monies....
Printing money is always a bad idea unless your plan is to devalue your debt.
Corps still pay taxes, its just minimised. Not too dissimilar to modern day. They just have more tools at reducing their exposure to taxes.
Money supply is a significantly more complex issue than that.
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In the Shadowrun setting it's a bit simpler.
Get all you can and the heck with everyone else..... *LOL*
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what a lot of people forget between the Mega Corps and Countries
1. Corps have to make a profit and adhere to The Bottom Line. Countries do not. This gives countries a much bigger percentage of their budget and manpower that can be spent on weapons of various flavors. not to mention manpower. and in many respects, while some nations may have crap for troops, Quantity is it's own quality, after a fashion. No Corp in it's right mind wants a sizable nation pissed at it. Kills the bottom line to no end and the nation will have reserves. Thor Shots or Not, a Nation that focuses ona mega corp as a 'existential enemy' will be able to make the corps life miserable in short order
2. Professional military's will think nothing of large casualties to achieve an important objective. A corp will look at it's ledger first and figure if it's worth it or not. Again, the Bottom Line. This is what makes Ares and Aztechnology so dangerous as they tend to work very closely with Local militaries and manipulate the politicians to send in the national forces first.
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what a lot of people forget between the Mega Corps and Countries
1. Corps have to make a profit and adhere to The Bottom Line. Countries do not. This gives countries a much bigger percentage of their budget and manpower that can be spent on weapons of various flavors. not to mention manpower. and in many respects, while some nations may have crap for troops, Quantity is it's own quality, after a fashion. No Corp in it's right mind wants a sizable nation pissed at it. Kills the bottom line to no end and the nation will have reserves. Thor Shots or Not, a Nation that focuses ona mega corp as a 'existential enemy' will be able to make the corps life miserable in short order
2. Professional military's will think nothing of large casualties to achieve an important objective. A corp will look at it's ledger first and figure if it's worth it or not. Again, the Bottom Line. This is what makes Ares and Aztechnology so dangerous as they tend to work very closely with Local militaries and manipulate the politicians to send in the national forces first.
Agreed. To a point.
While A nation could easily kick out a megacorp without too much fuss (it has happened several times now), they are in a much larger problem if they try to remove ALL The megas (and their subs) from their country.
the reason boils down to simple supply and demand.... their are very few countries in the world that can be truly self-sustaining and enclosed while keeping a level of social services that the population expects. With out trade, many countries would have their economies rocked (if not shattered) and the ability of the government to provide social services would be impacted, if not crippled to collapse.
The Megas on the otherhand would look at the total combined losses of assets and revenue as unacceptable, and would strike back... Now, this may not be with military force... trade embargoes, Cutting off lines of credit, increasing interest rates, denial of services, social and political propaganda could and would be used. And probably would be used before a military strike.
And this is what makes the Megas so frightening! They CAN cripple nations when they co-operate. AS an experiment, go grab 15 common items in your house (say, toilet paper, toothpaste, a pot, a glass, a plate, a shirt, underwear, socks, pants, a frozen food, a raw food, a veggie. an appliance, a personal electronic device, Shoes, a mode of transport, a fuel source) then look and see (or research) where it is made.
IF the item is not made in your country, consider the impact on your life if it was removed TOTALLY. Starting to see the picture?
Now, yes, some items wouldn't totally disappear, as they COULD be made in your country.... or could they?? look at the ingrediants... are they found in your country? if they are, in what quantity?
Now, select just 3 items that you grabbed, and triple the price. What impact would that have on your life? what if it was 5 times more? 15 times more?
Sadly, the end result of a total Mega Corp embargo against a country would probably lead to a shortage or disappearance of some "staple" items and a drastic increase in the cost of others. which would be directly felt by the citizens of the country.... and it would be those same citizens that would force the government to allow the megas back in.