Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Syndicates & Governments

[Endovior]

Mostly true. However, it is notable that $corpions are specifically defined as being bonds.

I missed that. And I can't find it either. But that would explain a lot of it.

From the start of the megacorps post:

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”.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[norms29]

The people of canada, camaroon, and the US Federal prision system have something relevant to say

On a more serious note, I can foresee a few issues with using bonds as a "currency backed Currency", One of the ideal attributes of money is to be a STABLE store of value, which bonds don't satisfy for a number of reasons.
the value of a bond changes:

• with time as it's point of maturity approaches.
  when the currency it redeems in changes in value.
  when interest rates change.
  when interest rates are expected to change.

there are reasons that bearer bonds aren't accepted as readily as cash in the real world, and while obviously they aren't insurmontable, I see no reason that that they would be more likely to gain acceptance than a "company scrip" as it was dismissivly called acting as a commodity (or service) backed currency.

EDIT: someone needs to explain to me what the 'list=' tag does and how it works,

[Username17]

Fourth Generation Warfare
“Bleed them until they are dry.”

The latter half of the twentieth century was virtually defined by fourth generation warfare (4GW): the use of asymmetries, communications, and guerrilla tactics to wear down opposing forces. The goal of 4GW is to make the achievement of ends by the other side sufficiently costly that they concede their mission as impossible or too expensive for the perceived benefit. This is how the Vietnamese defeated the American empire and how the Afghanis defeated the Soviet empire.

The calculus of 4GW is distressingly similar to the bloody attrition fests of the 19th century – attacks are made because they are expected to cost more to the enemy than they do to the cause. The difference is primarily one of scope and the widened notion of what it means to “cost”. Since ideologies do not have budgets in the traditional sense, the cost of a course of action is best defined: “how reduced the ability to act the followers of the ideology is after taking it.” Which is a pretty baroque definition, but it is importantly different from merely how many SpDRs were spent or how many man-hours were used. An action that drums up support for the cause may well have a negative cost.

The Cost of Atrocity
“No one likes to have allegations of warcrimes on their CV.”

While people can broadly be gotten to call for the deaths of people who are even marginally different with a disturbingly small push from authority or fear, the reality is that people don't actually like death very much. And they like the deaths of people considered “innocents” even less. Perpetrating acts that appear unjust will alienate potential (and current) allies even as it will inflame the lust for revenge in your enemies.

Atrocity is a delicate line to walk. Reddening one's hands proves that business is meant, and it spreads fear, and of course it literally kills people that are presumably opposed to the faction. But it also can offend people deeply and cast one's ideology as the villains. In general, the public is more willing to accept killing from regional authority, and more willing to accept killings of militants. But the public is more offended by the deaths of productively employed people and even more offended by the deaths of children.

Fifth Generation Warfare
“War is other people.”

Fifth generation warfare (5GW) is characterized by ongoing, multipolar conflicts without clear sides and multiple issues under contention. 5GW is often essentially indistinguishable from there being a high crime rate, and in 2075 it is considered to be the normal state of affairs in most of the world. When people have ideas that they feel strongly about, they use information, persuasion, vandalism, theft, and even physical violence to advance those ideas. An individual may have allegiance to more than one cause, and the basket of causes they fight for will often be different from the basket of causes supported by their allies within one of them.

Lone Gunmen
“Fools! I'll show them all!”

One of the hallmarks of fifth generation warfare is the emergence of superpowered individuals that push ideological points and strike against institutions and organizations they disapprove of. Anyone can simply start blogging about a subject they feel strongly about or start committing crimes against those who feel differently about it. And if this individual is effective and memorable enough, they will rouse others to action – both as copycats and as opponents.

Lone gunmen who support a cause advanced by a political advocacy group can be considered assets or even agents of that advocacy group. But the fact that people can and do take actions on their own initiative lends even quite closely allied actions an air of deniability. The actions of a particularly loose cannon can reflect badly on allied ideologies (which in turn provides ample room for false flag and agent provocateur missions), but the damage can be contained somewhat by disavowing individuals who go “too far”.

Small groups of lone gunmen are called “teams”, because people feel like jackasses when they talk about groups of lone gunmen. Accomplishing things as a team or lone asset is as much about branding as it is about direct action. It is not unusual for assets to develop nicknames or aliases as well as cultivating distinctive outfits and using signature symbols or language. Yes, people all over the world have adopted the aesthetic of luchadores or comicbook supervillains as a way to affect political change. Because it works.

Freikorps
“What convictions would you die for? What would you kill for?”

Political pressure groups and political parties are not really different things in most regions in 2075. Most political parties maintain voluntary paramilitary forces, which are called “freikorps”. Some people are members of more than one freikorp set up by different advocacy groups. The term “freikorp” comes from German, and refers to a period of instability in the early 20th century when political parties fielded paramilitary forces in running battles with those of other political parties and the police force.

The level of military training and equipment in different freikorps couldn't be more starkly different. Some freikorps function like real armies and have training sessions, command structures, military equipment, and even weapons of mass destruction. Others... don't. Yǎnjìngshé is a snake-themed mercenary terrorist organization that operates air piracy out of Yunnan and hires out to do anti-authority work all over the world. On the flip side, the CSA is plagued by the KKK, which is a ragtag band of thugs that do most of their terror work with baseball bats and kerosene.

[Stahlseele]

Oooh . . . Aaiir-Piiraacyy . . nifty concept.
But in reality, why and how would you?
It's much more profitable with hitting bigger shipments, which usually are done by ships or trains . . not by planes . .
On the other Hand . . do we want the World to be Batman Animated Series?
With Zeppelines flying around everywhere? Especially some god huge ones like the Cargo-Lifter, which could also be used for transcontinental air cargo in bigger quantities?
With flying Islands, or floating ones, smaller ones that do not have much room for an airport, this would make a bit more sense then . .
Also, how about the Iron Vulture from TailSpin?

[Endovior]

there are reasons that bearer bonds aren't accepted as readily as cash in the real world, and while obviously they aren't insurmontable, I see no reason that that they would be more likely to gain acceptance than a "company scrip" as it was dismissivly called acting as a commodity (or service) backed currency.

Despite the fact that your tag is broken, this is actually a really excellent point. As I'm considering the implications, I'm finding it really hard to see the corporate bonds Frank posited as a legitimate form of currency that you could reasonably buy things with, and really easy to see corporate scrip that anyone just prints off at whim to be more useful.

Of course, the fact that scrip can be printed off at whim makes it quite dangerous, in a very double-edged sword sense... as if other people think it's money, you can print off lots of it and thereby print money; and if you're required to exchange it for services, then you can ruin yourself thereby really easily. Of course, scrip being scrip, you could just change the prices, but if you do, good luck getting anyone to consider it money anymore.

I could see the IMF trying to regulate scrip currencies in addition to corporate bonds. If both exist, it'd be the scrip that people would call '$corpions', on account of how handling scorpions is likely to be really painful. I can't see the IMF being able to really stop anyone from printing however much scrip they want, though I can see them easily being able to torpedo the exchange value of any given example of scrip, since a quick expose on how Blue Hand has changed it's internal pricing system, effectively halving the amount of recreational drugs you can get with your BlueBucks, would have an immediate and noteworthy negative effect on the value of BlueBucks.

-snip-

Like you, the first thing I thought when I read 'air piracy' was 'Crimson Skies'. In practical terms, however, it's actually a lot simpler and less dramatic then you think.

1: Sneak an agent aboard a cargo plane while it's loading.
2: Agent points gun at pilot, takes over plane.
3: ?????
4: Profit!

This has the advantage of not only getting you whatever cargo the plane had aboard, it also gets you the plane. Which isn't a bad return on the time it takes for one of your thugs to infiltrate an airport's cargo handling peeps.

[name_here]

There's a big difference between "not being able to do whatever the hell you feel like" and "not having power". Since the IMF doesn't have as large a private army as a Megacorp, it obviously doesn't fall in the former category. So it for all practical intents and purposes can't blacklist a Megacorp simply because it happens to be thursday. I mean, that's technically within its powers but it's not going to happen. However, the IMF can blacklist a Megacorp because they're flagrantly ignoring their CBC limits. The reason for the dichotomy is that every Megacorp would rather its competitors not exceed their CBC limits.

The key reason why the IMF has power is that there's quite a lot of Megacorps, national governments, wannabe Megacorps, and Joe Averages who are trying to pull it in different directions. So long as the IMF convinces the majority that they're better off sticking with the IMF than not, anyone who decides to screw over the IMF or make it their personal puppet will be shot by the majority. So they actually can do anything within their charter if they can convince three-quarters of the Megacorps they've got a perfectly valid reason.

[A Man In Black]

Oooh . . . Aaiir-Piiraacyy . . nifty concept.
But in reality, why and how would you?

I don't think you got the joke.

[jadagul]

Bonds are tricky because interest rates make their values fluctuate. But then, interest rates also make the value of currency fluctuate, so it's at least conceptually possible that that's not that big a deal. Certainly, it's totally plausible that a megacorp is at least as credible as a minor nation, and minor nations still manage to issue currency.

And Endovior, Grek is right. If I understand Frank right, the point of CBC is that it's redeemable for "real" currency from some government. And the limits on how much CBC a megacorp can issue are based on what the IMF thinks the megacorp can credibly redeem. So if the IMF says that a megacorp is exceeding its limits, that means the IMF is asserting the megacorp can't pay off its bonds, and is essentially declaring the thing insolvent. Assuming the IMF has enough credibility that people believe it, that would be very bad for the value of the CBC.

[Endovior]

There's a big difference between "not being able to do whatever the hell you feel like" and "not having power". Since the IMF doesn't have as large a private army as a Megacorp, it obviously doesn't fall in the former category. So it for all practical intents and purposes can't blacklist a Megacorp simply because it happens to be thursday. I mean, that's technically within its powers but it's not going to happen. However, the IMF can blacklist a Megacorp because they're flagrantly ignoring their CBC limits. The reason for the dichotomy is that every Megacorp would rather its competitors not exceed their CBC limits.

The key reason why the IMF has power is that there's quite a lot of Megacorps, national governments, wannabe Megacorps, and Joe Averages who are trying to pull it in different directions. So long as the IMF convinces the majority that they're better off sticking with the IMF than not, anyone who decides to screw over the IMF or make it their personal puppet will be shot by the majority. So they actually can do anything within their charter if they can convince three-quarters of the Megacorps they've got a perfectly valid reason.

Yes, but that wasn't my point. My point was that the IMF acting alone doesn't actually have the power to independently sink a megacorp for whatever reason. There's no amount of 'proof' that the IMF can present/manufacture that can sink a megacorp that is actually solvent and functional... and even a megacorp in fairly hard times is still a massive enough entity to withstand such an attack, provided it has allies to call upon and assets to liquidate. If it was really a question of revoking bad bonds or ceasing to exist, a megacorp could damn well sell off some of it's less productive organs and use the cash generated thus to buy up the junk bonds that everyone's would theoretically be dropping in the wake of the IMF report, following which the megacorp would clearly be on the path to recovery.

The only real way to ruin something that big is with the full approval and support of most of the other megacorps. Heck, it's fairly certain that the IMF itself is so thoroughly penetrated by the megacorps that it can't even release an internal report suggesting that a given megacorp is possibly printing too much paper without the tacit approval of a majority of the megacorps. Everyone will want all kinds of spies all over the IMF because they don't want evidence to be manufactured against them, and because they'd kind of appreciate it if evidence were to somehow be found against their competitors. Everyone realizes that everyone's playing that game, though, and as such, an internal report can't actually become an outright public statement denouncing the value of a given megacorp's currency unless that given megacorp is both financially insolvent and politically anathema.

Accordingly, it's less that the IMF has any power to destroy megacorps, and more that the IMF is an agency by which the megacorps can collectively agree to execute one of their number for gross incompetence.

[fectin]

Accordingly, it's less that the IMF has any power to destroy megacorps, and more that the IMF is an agency by which the megacorps can collectively agree to execute one of their number for gross incompetence.

This.

[Stahlseele]

Oooh . . . Aaiir-Piiraacyy . . nifty concept.
But in reality, why and how would you?

I don't think you got the joke.

i'm german, the first thing i knew about GI Joe was the movie in cinemas some years back . .

[Username17]

The Cost of Obscurity
“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

An ideology only persists as long as people talk about it. If something becomes obscure enough that people don't talk about it anymore, it is unlikely that anyone will fight and die for it. Getting in the news can be a double edged sword – since any particular action could alienate allies and potential allies. But a certain minimum news presence is required to be considered to be a “real” movement. And without being taken seriously, there won't be any new donations or volunteers. Negative publicity is bad, but below a certain threshold a lack of publicity may be even worse. It is not uncommon for dying ideologies to lash out with newsworthy atrocities as a last ditch attempt to maintain relevance.

The Cost of Semtex
“If there ever was a building that cost less to put up than it cost to tear down, it would still be standing.”

Any attack, whether it is a pipe bomb or a libelous blog post has a literal cost to perpetrate. The labor hours of specialists are limited resources, as are more physical supplies, and if you use them for one thing you can't be using them for something else. But the damage caused by an attack is also measured by its cost. Things that are damaged or destroyed in an attack have costs to repair or replace. Whether they are lives, property, or reputations, the costs are real. So attacks are not something that anyone “wins”, they aren't even zero sum. Both the attacker and the target lose. The question is who loses more.

The calculus isn't even as simple as totaling up the adjusted SpDR value of everything lost on each side. The fact is that different groups can afford to lose different amounts of different things. A thousand dollars of Semtex lost is a lot to someone who makes eight thousand dollars a year, but a million dollar building doesn't mean a whole lot to a multi-billion dollar company – especially if it's insured. To a first approximation, the damage should be compared as percentages of available resources rather than nominal values.

While every attack has a literal cost, it is important to remember that almost every advocacy group is to some degree crowd-sourced for its funding and recruitment. That means that accomplishing things that are symbolically important essentially generates resources. It doesn't literally generate resources, because no SpDRs are printed, no potential soldiers are born, and no goods are produced – but it encourages people who are sympathetic to the cause to donate their funds and time to the group claiming responsibility. So long as there are sympathetic people who haven't donated, symbolically important attacks can divert resources to the group and thus appear to have a negative cost.

The Cost of Empire
“First things we repeal when we take over are the laws of arithmetic.”

Running things is expensive, and not running things is free. Being in charge of stuff not only takes time and money, it also takes political capital simply to keep things from falling apart. Now being in charge is also a potential source of income and manpower, which is why 3GW and earlier methods of conflict strongly favored larger countries and stronger rulers. But with the coming of 4GW came the discovery that simple obstructionism rendered controlling things to be of negative real value. In Afghanistan, locals disrupted the ability of foreign powers to extract wealth, and the grinding monthly cost of being there bankrupted the Soviets and then the Americans. The story of the 21st century has been one of the continuous erosion and division of empire. The days of countries with populations measured in the hundreds of millions are over – and there is no currently understood theory of organization and warfare that could plausibly bring them back.

This also applies in the purely political arenas. People want for services to increase, taxes to decrease, security to be provided and for police to not interfere with their activities. Any agency that is actually in charge is going to have to balance taxing and spending, liberty and security. But a group that is not in power has to do no such thing and can make completely absurd proposals that defy the principles of basic math. That is ultimately how the United States fell apart in the late twenties: insurgent political groups were able to get enough of a foothold in congress by making essentially impossible promises and essentially unforgivable accusations that they could bring the government to a screeching stop. Several attempts were made to restart the United States after default, but no group had sufficient capital (political and literal) to make it stick.

The realities of 4GW favor the insurgents over authorities. But transitioning from victory over the previous regime to being the next regime is a difficult task that is rarely successfully executed. Chechnya achieved independence from Russia, but once that had been accomplished the different factions found that they had no reason to get along without Russians to fight. Yet they still had the capacity and inclination to make the region ungovernable at any acceptable cost if they so chose. Many historians view the collapse of Chechnya as the beginning of fifth generation warfare.

Wetnoise
“A portmanteau of 'wet work' and 'signal noise'.”

Whenever someone perform any attack, it sends a signal. To a sufficiently motivated observer, that signal can be interpreted to discern what the target was, what the goals were, and how to strike back at the ideology responsible. And the higher profile the target of that attack, the louder and clearer that signal is. But that signal can be obscured with other attacks. This is called “wetnoise”, and was originally coined in reference to a Juarez-based crime family that would murder large numbers of random people in order to obscure the true targets of assassinations. But it broadly can refer to any transgression whose signals are obscured by other, apparently unrelated, crimes.

From stealing a prototype and burning the whole building down to cutting the power to a whole city block (and incidentally cutting the power to a specific target), wetnoise is a strategy that has proven effectiveness in 5GW. And because it's effective, people do it. And that drives crime rates even high – which perversely makes it even easier to hide directed actions in wetnoise.

The one really severe disadvantage of the strategy is that it pisses people off. Virtually by definition it pisses people off who are otherwise unrelated to the actual goals. And that makes wetnoise inappropriate for any mission that the perpetrating group intends to take credit for. Wetnoise is most effective for covert missions undertaken by deniable assets. The sponsoring group actually becomes safer from implication when the deniable assets go on a rampage of generalized mayhem, a reality that has led to rather frequent crime and vandalism sprees in much of the world of 2075.

[Stahlseele]

Wetnoise . . So . . basically . . If you want to be Black Trenchcoat/Mirror-Shades, you should do Pink Mohawk stuff to hide in? O.o
And if you want to be Pink Mohawk, you should do stuff Black Trenchcoat/Mirror-Shades style, so you get known as Pro's? o.O

[A Man In Black]

Wetnoise . . So . . basically . . If you want to be Black Trenchcoat/Mirror-Shades, you should do Pink Mohawk stuff to hide in? O.o
And if you want to be Pink Mohawk, you should do stuff Black Trenchcoat/Mirror-Shades style, so you get known as Pro's? o.O

If you want to steal something but want to cover your tracks, you set the entire building on fire.

If you want to steal something for someone to parade through the streets, you may want to avoid the neighborhood fires.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Whenever someone perform any attack, it sends a signal.

And that drives crime rates even high – which perversely makes it even easier to hide directed actions in wetnoise.

Also, are dollars still being used as currency?

[jadagul]

They are in most of North America, I think. Also "$" is an abbreviation for the IMF currency, but it's not pronounced "dollars."

[Lokathor]

Since $ means "dollar" to everyone, and since there really are dollars in this game (several kinds!) then the $ symbol can't mean anything except "dollar" and even though $piders can be spelled with a $ in it, the short symbol for it absolutely has to be something else.

Given that people write it in DnD without much trouble "350sp" or "350Sp" or "350.00sp" or some other such thing could be the way to list a price in Spiders.

[Username17]

No one has a problem with Canadian Loonies having the symbol "$".

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

"And that drives crime rates even high" high = higher

How about a section on The Cost of Failure. Publicly failing to do something convinces potential supporters to find someone competent and potentially helps the target recruit.

[kzt]

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.

Your bank will just automatically do it for you. Just like you can use your US visa card to buy things in Switzerland that are priced in Swiss francs or from a UK web site in pounds. I'd assume that if someone does an EFT denominated in euros the bank will convert it into whatever your account is denominated in, though I've never had to test that.

[jadagul]

kzt: if you do an EFT in dollars you transfer dollars, usually. At least for large sums you need to explicitly ask the bank to do the transfer in whatever currency you want it to happen in. But of course banks can do that easily.

Frank: that's because Canadian Dollars are also dollars.

I think the whole conversation is weird because the correct abbreviation for United States Dollars isn't $, it's USD, and I'd actually be perfectly happy losing the symbol "$" altogether (So, e.g. my preferred abbreviation for an SDR is just "SDR," which is what people use today). But I think I'm in the minority there.

[Username17]

The "$" sign is already used for Pesos, Cordobas, and Pa'Angas in addition to dollars.

One of the better theories of where the symbol comes from is an overprinting of an S and a P: for "Spanish Peso".

-Username17

[Username17]

Lawfare
“Sorry, game's over. We won.”

People have been screwing each other over within the rules for as long as there have been rules, but the concept was really codified into the idea of “lawfare” near the beginning of the 21st century by Chinese military theorists. The concept is that wherever rules exist there exist ways to screw someone over that are every bit as damaging as a military attack. And while that's probably a bit hyperbolic, the fact is that rules and laws can be used as a bludgeon to subjugate or impoverish. Doing so is called lawfare.

Lawfare is used by the powerful against the weak because it generally isn't especially dangerous or destructive, allowing powerful syndicates to defeat weaker syndicates in a safe and bloodless fashion. It is also waged by the powerful against other powerful entities because it generally isn't especially dangerous or destructive. Standard Oil would much rather have a legal battle with Gazprom than a literal one, because Gazprom has nuclear weapons and it is likely that even a “victory” would be a defeat.

The Golden Rule
“Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.”

Rules are not followed because of a mandate from the masses or because of a farcical aquatic ceremony. Rules are followed because of a simple calculus by which the assumed carrot for following the rules and the assumed stick for not following the rules make rule following appear to be worthwhile. Note that in the case of international and inter-corporate conflicts, the punishment for failing to abide by the rules could include nuclear war from which there are no survivors, so nation states are willing to follow some pretty disadvantageous rules.

But it is important to remember that rules are created for the same reason. People don't want to pay taxes or cede power to a commission. They don't want to restrict their future behavior with rules. And yet, rules get made. And they get made because the people making them think that the carrot for creating the rule combined with the stick for failing to do so are sufficient motivation despite any objections. This is most obvious when looking at British history, where every major reform from the Magna Carta on down was preceded by country paralyzing riots. In 2075, there are a lot more rules than there were in 1215, and that is because there are a lot more syndicates pushing for the creation of rules with carrots of campaign contributions and sticks of boycotts and civil unrest.

It should come as no surprise that when you look at laws, whether they be local, international, or corporate, that they are mainly crafted to serve the interests of people who have a lot of money and spend some of it to help get people elected. But the general undesirability of impoverished underclasses rioting and breaking stuff is also a fairly decent motivator, and rules are therefore set down to placate angry mobs as well.

Nine Tenths of the Law
“It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

Legal systems have a great deal of inertia, and regardless of the merits of a case the most likely end result is a costly status quo. This means that simply taking stuff and then going to court is a pretty decent way to get concessions in a lot of cases. It also means that for large syndicates that see the inside of a courtroom fairly often the balance of legal results are generally in their favor. While any particular court case may go against the powers that be, they are very unlikely to refuse to follow a court ruling. The value of following court rulings in general is still positive even if a specific one is not.

The cost of court proceedings, both in time and in money, is basically half the fun from the standpoint of governments and syndicates. Anyone (or any group) that has insufficient time or money can be pushed around quite effectively with legal challenges, even when those challenges have little legal merit. This is called a “SLAPP”, which stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation”. Most cease & desist emails don't come with the expectation that they would win, but merely that the target likely cannot afford to go to court at all.

Another thing to remember is that legal systems are constrained in what kind of punishments they can meet out. If a crime is large enough, it may be impossible for punishment to be commensurate. If you kill two people, you can't be executed twice (although some countries like the Conch Republic and Benin will sentence you to death plus hard labor). For crimes that involve stealing a large amount of stuff, the jail time may seriously be less than the amount it would take to earn that bling working honestly. On the flip side, going to jail for small thefts is almost always a losing proposition compared to working at Taco Temple.

Traditional Values
“First, I would like to apologize to my family...”

Many things that people traditionally do not do are not actually against any codified laws. Outside a handful of theocracies like Lanka, the Caliphates, and the Papal States, very few countries actually have laws against adultery. Nevertheless, people do not normally advertise that they are doing it and may resign from whatever positions they hold in disgrace should their transgressions be publicized even in the absence of any formal rules. And when you think about it, that's pretty weird. The reason this happens is because of vigilantes.

People don't like to see people who have “done wrong” go unpunished. When someone is caught in a scandal of some sort and nothing happens to them legally, people take it upon themselves to punish them in whatever way they can. Since these acts of revenge are spontaneous, they are also uncoordinated – just because one person spat in the culprit's coffee doesn't mean that another person won't. So not only does the transgressor have people being a dick to them all the time in minor and subtle ways, but people also take it upon themselves to do serious bad things to punish the person who “has not been punished” even if someone else has already done that. Getting a good set of apparent punishment out of the way at the beginning with some good old fashioned apologies and maybe some voluntary sanctions at work or whatever can cut off much larger problems in the future.

[Endovior]

Something interesting in the news lately... This guy seems like a good example for 5GW.

[Username17]

Time to throw up some African countries:

Algiers


Benin


Biafra


Central African Empire


Congo


East African Protectorate


Egypt


Lunda


Madagascar


Mali


Mutapa


Also listed (but no flag yet): Ethiopia, Fez, Ghana, Hutu, Ifni, Kamen Bornu, Kitara, Niger, Oyo, Papal State (Congo), Papal State (Niger), Presteria, Sheba, Somaliland, Songhai, South Africa, Tanganyika, Tunis, Tutsitia, Zanzibar, and Zulu don't have flags up. But the point is that Africa is basically laid out for mapability.