[Nath]

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?

[Lusis]

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.

[Black]

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?

[Angelone]

I think I need a degree to continue to follow this conversation. However, what Black said seems viable.

[Sendaz]

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.

[Silence]

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.

[Lusis]

Two words on mercenaries: Executive Outcomes. 

[Sendaz]

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

[Silence]

You do that game, too?

[Lusis]

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

Lol I could totally visualize BA as a troll and Face as an elf....face.

[GiraffeShaman]

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.

[grid_roamer]

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.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

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'.

[grid_roamer]

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.....

[Nath]

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.