We know in Masters of Orion and other empire building type games, you can change or run your government different ways. A democracy, a dictatorship, a theocracy, etc. Most times, I don't really notice this changing the game play much. Does it matter? In a game idea I've been tinkering with, I actually wanted to implement a corpocracy as the main form of government. In a corpocracy, corporations are the ones who are actually making the big decisions and running things. (Would this by like Shadowrun? I actually haven't played it much...) How do you thing a corpocracy would work? Would the "President" of the government be more like a CEO? Would the Senate actually be a board of directors? How would this corporation operate in relation to other private businesses? Would it be one corporation that runs the nation, or a group of them working together? If it's one, would it be considered a monopoly?

I notice that governments in most empire games really don't give you the flavor of that government-- they mainly concentrate on research or monetary bonuses, troop support levels or research speed. The old Civilization had an interesting mechanism where the Senate could veto your decisions, but because there were no strategic choices that could impact the Senate it came across as a frustratingly arbitrary decison.

I think that if you want to distinguish a theocracy from a "corpocracy" (which is essentially fascism, btw) you'll have to model the citizens a bit and put them into gameplay. A dictator should have to worry about imprisoning or killing off rival generals and other opposition (like the religious community, at a cost). A megacorp ruler should have to worry about strategic alliances with subsidiaries, juntas backed by board members, and the ultimate valuation of his own shares.

btw, there's a bunch of different ways you could go with corporations ranging from corporate dictatorships (indentured slaves) to corporate democracies (one worker, one share). It depends on if you want to model inhumane corporations or enlightened corporations. A lot of the details depend on the needs of your universe.

Hmm, good points, and thanks for your input.

This scenario is fairly brutal, I think. Hostile takeovers, corporate espionage, etc. Space colonies aren't run by a governor or mayor, but instead are owned by a corporation. People who live there aren't so much citizens, but employees. They don't pay taxes, they pay fees. Further, since everything on the colony is owned, maintained, and ran by the corporation, workers are more or less enslaved into the system. In the real world, companies today might provide health benefits, a 401K, and so on to their employees, but in this world, the corporation provides everything: your home, your clothes, your food, etc. Workers get a minimal amount of pay that they can spend however they like.

It's like working and living in a giant shopping mall. While you're an employee, the Mall provides you with an apartment in the building, your food at the food court, your clothes from Old Navy, and so on. You get clothes rations, entertainment rations, food rations...everything you need to survive is taken care of, but you only actually get to take home 50 cents an hour to spend however you like. Promotions, of course, mean larger apartments, more rations...

I sort of imagine that there are several large corporations, each one owning several colonies. Within the colony, other businesses may set up their own trades, but they pay the colony corporation fees to do business there. Like a shopping mall, still. So while Corporation A owns the colony, Corporation B might still open up a Research Facility, and then pay Corporation A monthly fees to do business there.

Over all of this is the "big" corporation that in a sense owns just about everything. Everybody pays this corporation fees. This one makes all the rules, has business ties with anything and everything, uses it's own military force to keep the population in line, and will buy out, starve, or openly attack anything that poses a threat to it.

Didn't really want to go off rambling, but I guess essentially that's the scenario I imagine: A huge corporation, or possibly group of corporations, that run and own everything (Wal*Mart with an army?) and then many smaller corporations underneath them that provide most of the actual work: The miners, the farmers, the ship builders, etc.

What kind of ideas do you have for how these corporations interact? How the "big" corp runs everything else? What kind of political, social, and economic changes would there be to such a system? Would it work for this Big Corp to just own all the other Corps? Would the Big Corp allow anyone to do business independently? I don't know much about business or politics, so I'm curious how such a system would function and operate.

I think what matters more than anything else is what kind of interactions and events you want to be possible in the game. This will determine how you build the world. If you have one dominant corporation then your looking at a dictatorship with inner resistance as the only real mechanism for struggle (coups and rebels). I think if you have lots of different corporations you have more fertile territory for creating conflicting factions with different specialties.

You could have everyone in the society employed on a contractual basis, like in the Dorsai universe. Military leaders owe no loyalty to any entity, only to the highest bidder or employer they want to work for. (An interesting conflict in the Dorsai series was between whether people should be treated like commodities or freelancer capable of rising based on their talents and drive).

Do you have a really good reason for wanting to make the people corporate slaves? I ask only because it's been done a bazillion times before and it would be nice to see a different take on it.

There were some examples of corporate control in movies and television. Some good examples I can think of are the original "Rollerball" movie and the excellent but short lived cable TV series "Total Recall: 2070". Generally, corporations like weak governments they can manipulate when it suits them, but ones that deal with all the things like police or welfare which would screw with their bottom line and/or reputation. They would prize stability and predictability in society. They would probably set up a system of monopolies or non-competing oligopolies. Such a society would have less innovation and discovery than some (if your game were to compare it to other systems), but it would be filled with Byzantine back-room manipulations to try to get your plans into action (for example, an invasion of a resource-rich planet is backed by the Energy Corporation, but is vetoed by the Consumer Goods Consortium and the Construction Group and you need to somehow talk, bribe or blackmail them into complying) which could be a game itself.

You could have a system with many violently competing companies (pretty common in sci-fi - for example, the Sid Prophet episodes of "Andromeda"), but that would be marked by a non-existent or totally ineffectual government. It would be meaningless to run such a system.

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If you have one dominant corporation then your looking at a dictatorship with inner resistance as the only real mechanism for struggle (coups and rebels).

This is what I'm looking for, yes. The big bad guys running everything, and the small group of rebels fighting against them.

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Do you have a really good reason for wanting to make the people corporate slaves?

That's an interesting question, and this is something I've just sort of taken for granted. Who else *but* corporate slaves would want to violently rebel against their oppressors?

The reason that I wanted to take this into a corporate-run direction rather than a government-run one is that I thought the idea was interesting and it seemed to play out well with what our future might be like in a couple hundred years. We're surrounded by examples of business and corporate America flexing their muscles to accomplish the things that they want, influence the government, and make or break peoples lives. Money is what talks, and it seemed to me that a future completely run from this ideology would be somewhat interesting. If this has become cliche, though, maybe I should rethink it.

Hi Taolung,

You might want to think about something with regard to corporations to fill in a few blanks:

1. The goal of a corporation is to earn a profit. It serves only the corporation and its shareholders.

2. In keeping with #1, the corporation should find ways to offset its costs to some other entity or rid of those costs completely.

4. The corporation should have no barriers to unlimited use of resources for production.

5. An endless supply of customers should constantly need the product.

I think you're on the right track. Somebody asked, "Why make people corporate slaves?" Well, aren't we already? If corpA comes out with some new or improved product do we buy it? Does anyone stop the endless barrage of advertising whether we want it or not?

I see the natural progression of corporate interests becoming government policy. Like Taolung asks, "Could this be us in a number of years?" I say, "Could be."

The five things I said about corporations are true. Read the book, The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Then look at what policies our government sets and ask yourself, "Whose priorities do the government serve?"

Taolung, if I were you I would set up a model of a corporation and consider these things:

Say, for example, a corporation like Proctor and Gamble had control over a region of states. The government of that area is essentially replaced with a "board of directors". No congressmen or senators or anything like that. All policies ( formerly termed as laws ) are mandated arbitrarily by the board and in the interests of the corporation. Perhaps not only here, but other countries as well given the international scope of corps now. Develop a scenario and following the five things I listed try to imagine what would happen next. Kind of a "what if" scenario.

What if everyone worked for Proctor and Gamble in those areas?
What if neighboring areas were controlled by a competing corporation?
How would disputes over resources and customers be solved?
How would our daily lives be changed?
Who would be in charge?
What if all computers were IBM? MAC?
What if all drinks were Pepsi? Coke?
What telecommunications companies would exist?

I've been toying with this idea for a while too. I've gone through a few of these scenarios. I'd be willing to trade ideas with you if you're interested.

Jim

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The reason that I wanted to take this into a corporate-run direction rather than a government-run one is that I thought the idea was interesting and it seemed to play out well with what our future might be like in a couple hundred years. We're surrounded by examples of business and corporate America flexing their muscles to accomplish the things that they want, influence the government, and make or break peoples lives. Money is what talks, and it seemed to me that a future completely run from this ideology would be somewhat interesting. If this has become cliche, though, maybe I should rethink it.

CJ Cherryh in her novel Hard Time had an interesting take on what this would be like from a human perspective. Two hardscrabble miners working for the corp find a fellow miner half-dead. The younger of the two, raised entirely in space under the tender mercies of the company town, wants to charge the guy for air and medicine. The other guy, older and raised on Earth, wants to help him out as an act of humanity. Cherryh is good at pitting the two philosophies together-- production and the bottom line versus emotion and humaneness-- but she doesn't make them automatons. Rather than slaves, these people are being manipulated into a kind of corporate fundamentalism (for instance, no one gets writing implements and everyone has to use the asteroid intranet so the corp can keep out dissident graffiti) so they don't have to be oppressed. They just become converts.

Some food for thought -- If the corporations have taken over in the future, how has this impacted other important human areas: various world religions, both militant and peaceful (and their relationship to imperialism-- think Ghandi, for example); the rebellous nature of the internet and free spreading information; corporate competition and sabotage (the bigger any empire gets, the more its allies band together)

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Original post by netanator Somebody asked, "Why make people corporate slaves?" Well, aren't we already?

I think there's a huge difference between being somewhat propagandized and being a slave. Nothing forces you to buy products, and you can choose not to consume and even get off the energy grid (though it's a lot more trouble than most people are willing to take)

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If corpA comes out with some new or improved product do we buy it? Does anyone stop the endless barrage of advertising whether we want it or not?

The problem that corporations have today is twofold: One, their advertising doesn't reliably work (people still stop buying when the economy is weak, no matter how much is spent); and two, they still have to depend on protecting their brand image, which if tarnished costs them dearly (Enron, Union Carbide, etc.)

Seems to me that families would begin to work for specific companies generation after generation. The megacorporations would provide the necessities of life to their employees, and most interaction with other companies would be trade for things they don't produce. Without a real central government, employees would probably be paid in scrip valid only at the company store. Criminal justice would be the department of company security forces and probably unjust. All companies would be constantly angling for new areas to expand into, thus expanding their political power and reducing dependence on other corps. I expect sabotage of competing productions lines in an attempt to gain market share would be common.