From the start of the megacorps post:fectin wrote:I missed that. And I can't find it either. But that would explain a lot of it.Endovior wrote: Mostly true. However, it is notable that $corpions are specifically defined as being bonds.
FrankTrollman wrote:A megacorp is a corporation with the power to issue money that is recognized by the IMF. Even in 2075, corporations are not allowed to produce fiat currency and corporate money is technically a bond that becomes backed in other currency after a certain amount of time has past (usually 5 years). These are called “currency-backed-currencies” or “CBCs”.
That doesn't sound like especially good business to me, at least not in terms of local dealings. If you're trying to sell stuff in Los Angeles, where everything runs on USD, you'd better accept USD at par, or your competition has a one-up on you. You might pull that kind of thing in a city you totally control, but not in disputed territory. Now, there might be an exception for foreign currencies... if you can even find someone who'll take your Pesos in Moscow, they'll probably butcher you on the exchange rate... but that's about it. It's simply just not smart to piss off your local market.fectin wrote:But corps probably charge enough of a premium (because it doesn't take much) to handle anything that isn't their scrip or $piders that an exchange can make a small fortune offering slightly discounted prices for that corp. And corps presumably do enough business back and forth that they want to hold reserves of in scrip of companies they deal with a lot.Endovior wrote: The fact that individual megacorps might also issue scrip, especially to it's employees, doesn't make scrip something that's especially valuable to the average joe. Currency exchangeable only for MaBell's Megabytes simply isn't as valuable as currency that you can also use at the corner store to buy bread, and although people who live in Kansas City in the shadow of MaBell's arcology complex can probably do both with it, they still recognize that USD is probably more valuable, and won't give you a nice flat exchange rate if you want to trade. Similarly, though on a wider scale, currency you can only use in parts of the US isn't as valuable as the $piDeR, which you can inevitably exchange somewhere to let you buy anything that's purchasable anywhere on Earth, or even Mars.
Essentially, by artificially inflating the value of their scrip (i.e. giving slightly more goods for it than the exchange rate would normally dictate), corps get an interest free loan, paid for solely by discount points.
So even someone far from anywhere the corp operates can exchange scrip for $piders, because he can find someone who actually does want that scrip.
It's exactly like gift cards.
Now, I could see that happening on a more subtle basis... but not as anything much stronger then a modern loyalty rewards type program, where every X dollars of purchases you counts towards getting free stuff from the company, with extra bonus points for using company money. Anything much more blatant then that, and it starts to feel obvious that you're tricking people out of their money. Because that's actually what you're doing.
That's not actually true; it's already been stated that the megacorps all got together at some point in the past and agreed to appoint the IMF to monitor currency printings. Accordingly, the megacorps actually can collude to create an international reserve currency, since they've done so before.name_here wrote:The IMF has serious power because Megacorps simply don't like each other enough to cooperate to replace it. If $piders were to collapse, you wouldn't have the Megacorps collude to make a new exchange currency; you'd just stop being able to exchange CSA dollars for New Egypt dollars without first exchanging them for about three intermediary currencies to chart a path through countries that recognize the legitimacy of each other.
Also not true. Being entities as big as they are, and having their own cities and such, the megacorps already have their own exchanges, and the megacorps that are specifically based around finance or resources have big and powerful ones. Other megacorps that don't directly compete with them will use those exchanges for the purposes of dealing with the megacorp in question where convenient... and even direct competitors might mess around on each others exchanges where they can see an advantage in doing so. If the IMF decided to press the fuck you button on Monolith Corporation, Monolith would press it right back, and there'd be a bunch of global instability and turmoil resulting. All the other megacorps simply couldn't profitably drop Monolith just on the IMF's sayso, since Monolith actually owns a good deal of everyone's workforce, and trying to not deal with them would be just as damaging as not dealing with the IMF.name_here wrote:So, most likely the IMF does not randomly fuck with Megacorps, Megacorps listen to the IMF, and any exceptions to the second rule stop getting to issue CBCs or buy things like electricity and internet. A Megacorp could try to set up their own exchanges, but none of the other Megacorps would recognize the legitimacy of their currency, their scrip, or their contracts. After all, even Megacorps collapse, and when they do, their scrip becomes waste paper.
Again, with just the powers of 'arbitrarily set exchange rates' and 'denounce xxx megacorp's $corpions', the IMF actually doesn't have the clout to take out any given megacorp. Also, they're not as big as any of the megacorps, and though they certainly have bodyguards and such, they don't have a private army. I could see an adventure planned around either 'assassinate the head of the IMF' or 'prevent the assassination of the head of the IMF'; but if shit were to really hit the fan, I could see a megacorp using an orbital death ray to make it's point where subtle assassins fail.name_here wrote:Obviously, the IMF cannot piss off all the Megacorps, but it can blacklist any single Megacorp just fine. Its power comes from being important to all the Megacorps and all legitimate national governments, not from being important to that one Megacorp that pissed them off, so they can levy exchange rate penalties and cut CBC allotments to rulebreakers without losing too much sleep. Also, I find it extremely unlikely assassinating the IMF leadership is in any way practical. After all, they have money. The thing with money is that you can use it to hire people with guns, and the IMF has enough hire a lot of people with guns.
EDIT: Also, it should be noted that all the power to arbitrarily set exchange rates between the various possible currencies and your own currency gets you is the ability to get screwed over by anyone else's currency market.