[Nath]

Now, we have AA multinationals, of which there are scores, if not hundreds.  Their cash flow is part of no country either; let's say, for argument's sake, that there are 300 AAs, with an average gross corporate product of ... 7% of the Big 10.

Unless Stolen Souls chapters I have yet to read introduce two hundred new megacorporations, there are about fifty AA-rated corporations who have been mentioned in the canon and would be currently operating as of 2075.

Considering most of the world has been covered and AA ought to be significant enough to have noticeable presence, I wouldn't expect the number to rise much above that line (China, India and Indonesia are big enough to have dozens of large corporations we have yet to read about, but on the other hand AA are supposed to operate in multiple countries...).

[Kincaid]

I pray that writers never get to the point where they're trying to come up with an exhaustive list of AA corps.

[Wakshaani]

I pray that writers never get to the point where they're trying to come up with an exhaustive list of AA corps.

It's a hobby for some of us.

In my personal head cannon, the Corporate Court has a list. There are X number of Triple A corps, with a finite number based on how many corporate court judges there are. By definition, you can't have more AAA-rated than judges, since the rating gives you the right to have a seat on the big board.

Below that, there are exactly 50 Double-A's. This is the extra-territorial level and this is where you are officially a Big Deal. Those at the top of the list (#'s 11-15, for example) are all circling like hungry sharks, waiting to make a big move when someone above gets weak, so that the can take their seat and their rating. The competition keeps 'em hungry. At the BOTTOM of that list, #'s 45-50, or maybe 40-50, it's similar, but everyone knows that one wrong move can get you de-listed. Those guys are *paranoid* about losing their precious Double-A standards and, like any animal backed into a corner, will fight wildly.

After that, the rest of the Big 500 is filled out with single A-rated corps (Which, honestly, we can never have enough of) ... Big enough to catch the Court's eye, small enough to be prey for the real players.

The vast majority of companies aren't rated as they aren't big enough. There are tens of thousands of them, but they don't "count" in a way.

Again, this is just what's in my head.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

*plugs in new numbers, yes I did create a spreadsheet, don't judge me, dammit*

Well.  That actually makes it ... oddly enough, closer to bearable, so to speak - and also closer to the numbers used in that other thread.  300 AAs swallow a lot of what's available; reducing that number to 50 actually allows us to increase the amount the AAAs directly produce/control, to the '25% of the world's wealth' Wobbly claims in the Corporate Download quote.  Let's throw this up there ...

Country       GDP / GCP       Population       GDP/GCP Per Capita              RL World       $75,000,000,000,000       7,250,000,000       $10,345       US       $16,800,000,000,000       318,713,000       $52,712       China       $9,240,270,000,000       1,366,650,000       $6,761       Japan       $4,901,530,000,000       127,130,000       $38,555       UK       $2,522,261,000,000       63,489,000       $39,728       Germany       $3,634,823,000,000       80,781,000       $44,996       Brazil       $2,245,673,000,000       203,130,000       $11,055       Canada       $1,825,096,000,000       35,427,524       $51,516                                   Big 10       Controlling 25%                     AAA (One)       $1,875,000,000,000       21,750,000       $86,207       AA (One)       $131,250,000,000       2,175,000       $60,345       AAA (All 10)       $18,750,000,000,000       217,500,000       $86,207       AA (All 50)       $6,562,500,000,000       108,750,000       $60,345       Rest of SR World       $49,687,500,000,000       6,923,750,000       $7,176                                   Big 10       Controlling 40%                     AAA (One)       $3,000,000,000,000       21,750,000       $137,931       AA (One)       $210,000,000,000       2,175,000       $96,552       AAA (All 10)       $30,000,000,000,000       217,500,000       $137,931       AA (All 50)       $10,500,000,000,000       108,750,000       $96,552       Rest of SR World       $34,500,000,000,000       6,923,750,000       $4,983    Fewer sharks in the water means more pie for everyone - but hitting that 40% I spoke about reduces the rest of the world into general penury.  As a note, I have the amount the AAs control hooked directly into the amount the AAAs do - a AA averages 7% of what a AAA does, so when the Big 10 go up, so do the multinationals.  25% puts people overall better than China's current average, but still worse off than the current planetary; 40% would really suck eggs for everyone else, putting them under China's current.  I think I'd stick with the 25%. I tell ya, getting rid of those 250 AAs really let me boost the percent the Big 10 controlled; previously it was about 1/6th, 16.667%.  And this really increases the amount the 'haves' possess - a AAA corporate citizen averages over $86k/year ...

[Ariketh]

At one point there was a spreadsheet floating around here and Dumpshock, IIRC, where some enterprising soul had compiled a list of all the SR corps, their subsidiaries (if known), their rating (if known) and references where applicable. I want to say it was accurate up through SR3 and maybe early SR4. But I can't find the copy I downloaded anywhere.

Wait, Nath, weren't you said enterprising soul? Or am I mixing you up with someone else?

-Ariketh

[Wakshaani]

Keep in mind that average corp citizen is heavily influenced by the top wage-earners. What's the old line? "Bill Gates walks into a bar with four homeless guys: The average net worth of everyne there is $4 Billion." Something like that. The CEO and high-level execs make Mad Bank, while the middle managers get by at Middle and the majority of office drones are pulling in around 25K a year.

Figure 500$ a week for the peons, who work 72 hour weeks, comes in at around 7 Nuyen an hour, (Well, they mostly get paid in corp scrip, but hey.)

Oh, and there's another way the Big Ten cackle at the rest. There's probably an official Z-O Bank affiliate at each of teh Big Ten which allows you to convert your scrip to Nuyen at a 10% cut. (You can also convert Nuyen to Scrip at no cost. They're nice that way!) ... So, if you want to go vacation for a week, you can cash in your onhand scrip and go off the reserve. That'll probably come up in your next performance review, of course.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Figure 500$ a week for the peons, who work 72 hour weeks, comes in at around 7 Nuyen an hour, (Well, they mostly get paid in corp scrip, but hey.)

You never, never run your people into the ground.  48 hour work weeks?  Sure.  50?  Maybe.  60?  If you really want to press it.  Here's the catch, though, if you do that - and it's a double-whammy.

First, they break down.  10 hour days, seven days a week?  Even 12 hour days, six days a week - the body wears out.  You get tired.  60 hour work-weeks are seriously tough, that's working literally half the day, 3/4 of your waking time - maybe less, but then you're getting less actual sleep.  You wind up working yourself into exhaustion.  You can bet that the corporation has working hours cost/benefit plotted out to a T, and running people into the ground just doesn't pay back the time it takes to train them.  The best point is probably going to be a 50-hour work week - 8 hour days, 7 days a week, or five by 10 hour days.  At ¥7/hour, that's ¥350/week, which is ¥17,500 per 50-work-week year.  (Gotta give 'em a few days for 'vacation' - even if that's just time off to replace sick days.)

Second, if they're too exhausted to do stuff, they'll be too exhausted to give their hard-earned corp scrip back to the company.  If you're dead-beat exhausted, who can take the time to buy something serious and prep it?  A Nukit cup of Soy-Noodles and off to bed.  From the corporate point of view, employee leisure time is time they're earning the corporation money too - by purchasing their products.  And this is something you want.

We love to overestimate how many hours people work a week, but when there are only 168 hours, and roughly 56 of them are going to be spend in unconsciousness ... try not to eat up too much of the last 112 at work. 

[Wakshaani]

Six 12-hour days, yeah. This is actually softer than it was doen back in the Industrial Revolution, and is fairly commonplace in high-pressure jobs today... many Japanese office workers have a 40 hour schedule but "Mandantory overtime" is well-understood, pushing weeks to 70-80 hours on a constant basis for years. You see the same in Wall Street, and even unpaid interns regularly put in 60 hour work weeks for no pay at all (While going to school!) ... Yeah, it's abusive, but the real world shouldn't be *more* harsh than the dystopian one, right?

Heck, there's a song about the 80 hour Japanese work week, based on the phrase "Monday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fFJYSHnMM6Q

The scary thing is how much of this is UNPAID overtime.

This overwork is what leads to workers sleeping on trains (or sometimes at work, with co-workers sepping in to save them), and the existance of coffin motels for those workers who have stayed so late that they've missed the last train home, so need a place to sleep overnight to go back in the morning. Common enough to create an entire industry, that one.

Now, keep in mind, this kind of insane workload is only really seen in the high-pressure corporate world. Normal people doing, say, retail or food services, they clock their hours and then go home at normal hours like normal people. They also get paid far less.

For the INdustrial Revolution side, 10 hour workdays were the norm (With Sunday off for church, otherwise six days a week), with 12 hours days the norm in the Steel Industry. Child labor was also in effect, with children miners putting in a work day from 4 AM to 5 AM (Admitedly, this was more than the norm), while 6-day, 14 hour factory shifts were fine for kids, who frequently lost limbs/parts/lives in the machinery.

Worker rights formed up and shut that kind of thing down eventually, but it's something that was done for decades and, even today, farmers tend to put in 10-12 hour days, six days a week, and often half-days on Sunday.

72 hours is probably more excessive than it should be (Probably 60 hours if we were more realistic), but, you know, depressing distopia rules are in effect.

[DeathStrobe]

To be fair Wyrm, it is possible to keep the corp employee highly productive with a combination of a sleep regulator and long haul, and probably a few other choice pieces of ware and drugs. This is a dystopian setting. So it fits the themes to push employees to the breaking point where they're eventually kicked out and become Neo Anarchists and start to run the shadows.

[Lusis]

Eh. It's an immersion thing for me. It's simply not believeable that everyone outside of the 1% is dirt poor and expect there to be so much wealth and innovation. 

Speaking of innovation. Usually when something becomes too expensive for a large portion of the citizenry,  someone will find a way to sell something cheaper in its place. Take Uber and Lyft for current examples.

Work hours are largely a cultural thing. What works in Japan won't in France; and might in the US, depending on compensation. Sleep regs and drugs might sell to the higher execs and the wall street crowd, but not everyone will be on board.

[Nath]

Well.  That actually makes it ... oddly enough, closer to bearable, so to speak - and also closer to the numbers used in that other thread.  300 AAs swallow a lot of what's available; reducing that number to 50 actually allows us to increase the amount the AAAs directly produce/control, to the '25% of the world's wealth' Wobbly claims in the Corporate Download quote.  Let's throw this up there ...

The actual line is from Corporate Download "The amount of assets the Big Ten claim is almost beyond scale, easily accounting for at least a quarter of the world's wealth (in all likelihood, this figure is much higher, especially if you estimate secrets funds and hidden ownership)."

So the 25% figure would rather apply to assets, not GDP. The order of magnitude is similar, a bit higher, with estimated world wealth between 100 and 250 billions (depending on sources). But what it represents is a completely different thing. For instance, debt is subtracted from wealth when issued, while it is subtracted from GDP when repaid. Also, when a natural disaster destroys your house, it destroys wealth, but it doesn't make a dent in GDP - but rebuilding a new one will nonetheless contribute to GDP (actually, without a home, it's likely your economical contribution will actually be lower, thus reducing GDP).

The shift to the east is also slower when it comes to wealth than GDP: US still has about 30% of the world wealth, and China is just catching up on Japan's 10%.

At one point there was a spreadsheet floating around here and Dumpshock, IIRC, where some enterprising soul had compiled a list of all the SR corps, their subsidiaries (if known), their rating (if known) and references where applicable. I want to say it was accurate up through SR3 and maybe early SR4. But I can't find the copy I downloaded anywhere.

Wait, Nath, weren't you said enterprising soul? Or am I mixing you up with someone else?

That was me. That list is supposed to cover most of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition, up to System Failure. I stopped having the time for such tedious task around the same time I graduated from university and started working (and, ok, let's admit it, World of Warcraft was released). I have a file where I started compiling new data, up to Corporate Enclaves page 58, but 4th edition quick pace left me hopeless to ever catch up.

http://nmath.free.fr/onyx/depot/Corporate%20Index%202065.xls

[Ariketh]

At one point there was a spreadsheet floating around here and Dumpshock, IIRC, where some enterprising soul had compiled a list of all the SR corps, their subsidiaries (if known), their rating (if known) and references where applicable. I want to say it was accurate up through SR3 and maybe early SR4. But I can't find the copy I downloaded anywhere.

Wait, Nath, weren't you said enterprising soul? Or am I mixing you up with someone else?

That was me. That list is supposed to cover most of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition, up to System Failure. I stopped having the time for such tedious task around the same time I graduated from university and started working (and, ok, let's admit it, World of Warcraft was released). I have a file where I started compiling new data, up to Corporate Enclaves page 58, but 4th edition quick pace left me hopeless to ever catch up.

http://nmath.free.fr/onyx/depot/Corporate%20Index%202065.xls

Cool! Thanks for the link. And yeah, I can understand projects sliding due to MMOs. It's happened to me more than once. Even if it's not accurate up to present day, there's still tons of information there to work with.

Thanks again!

-Ariketh

[firebug]

Lusis' point about immersion reminds me of something I thought once, too.

Everyone working 72+ hours doesn't quite make sense if only because the setting makes it clear that a lot of entertainment still thrives, from VR MMOs to live concerts (in this day and age!) and hell, there's even still a zoo in Seattle.  The club and bar scene is still known to be very popular too.  Like with what Wyrm said, for these things to be profitable, people need to still have the time and money to spend on them.  Especially with the existence of VR matrix games, it means there's still got to be a large amount of people with a good amount of free time who are making a decent amount of money (buying a good comm, sim module, and grid access isn't too cheap I'm sure, and the games themselves likely suck as much nuyen as they can).

While a lot of it would be "people in the Sixth World need as much escapism as possible" they still actually need the resources to achieve that.  More circling back to Wyrm's comments about scrip-circles.

[Ursus Maior]

Huge post about GDP.

Ouroboros, did you take into account that many AAAs and AAs consist of many smaller companies that only together form the megacorp they are perceived to be? Often that means that SK-Prime or the Novatech (back in the day) are not producing anything. They just own and decide top level policies.

Just so you don't devide the cake multiple times, when in fact all products are produced in the lower levels of the hierarchy, but the producing companies don't own large parts of their sites or tools (or employees). As these might be part of other companies etc.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Ursus, I think you're confusing ... actually, I'm not sure what you're confusing.  GDP is a measure of the value of goods produced and services rendered.  I confess that I used it improperly, as a benchmark for 'how much people make', somewhat as a measure of what people get paid; Nath gently called me on it, and he's got lots of great points (AAAs control 25% of the wealth, not 25% of the GGP (Gross Global Product?)).  Me, I used the GDP as a benchmark because I have no frickin' idea how/where to look up other regular information, or what it'd be called, etc. etc.

Either way, we aren't needing to account for 'pure management' corporations.  Saeder-Krupp may have SK-Prime, which is a management/troubleshooting 'corporation', but nobody should argue that they do not add value (by way of efficiency and increasing production) to any corporation over which they possess oversight.  Nobody should argue either that SK as a whole does not Produce Stuff or Render Services - it ain't the largest megacorporation in the world by dint of being a complete and total management conglomerate.  (Horizon, maybe.)  That means that what is considered SK, and what adds to SK, is only SK, management corporation fragments or not.

And no, I'm not double-dipping or whatever; I'm looking at full-bore owns-itself corporations, not owned by other corporations - or which, even if they are, can either make a strong argument for being effectively independent, or else feed other megacorporations only as much as their slice allows.  I mean, we have what, only 60 corporations we're talking about up above?  And the sum total is of every 'slice'.  If anything, I may be underestimating what the AAA and AA corporations control/produce, as compared to the A and sub-nationals.