[DWC]

>>>>>[Beyond the people still invested in the lie, who's ignoring it?  It's been the core of my argument the whole time.]<<<<<

--Vice (12:19:19/10-31-74)

[Ympulse]

>>>>>[I do apologize for overlooking your post, Vice.]<<<<<

-- Emmas (11:36:23/10/31/2012)

[Crunch]

>>>>>[Emmas, that definition of organized crime sounds like it could apply to any corporation or government just as easily. For the most part the maf fills a real market that happens to be illicit. Whether that market is for BTLs, drugs, gambling or prostitution is pretty irrelevant. And at least in the protection rackets I was involved with the racket was a better buy than small business insurance. There's not enough difference between organized crime and corporate activity to define it clearly.

Of course that may damn the corps more than bless the mob. ]<<<<<
     -- Mr. Fabulous (01:15:38/10-31-74)

[Mirikon]

>>>>>[Indeed. 'Lie', you call it? Is it more or less true than the activities of corporations and governments around the world? At least the Yakuza and other syndicates are honest and upfront about what will happen if you don't comply. Emmas and NiSayer, your biases are showing.

As for Tamanous, though I personally find their work distasteful, they, too, serve a market in the community. Both for those of us who are looking to get rid of a corpse, and for those who need organs, but can't go to legitimate sources, either because they don't have the funds, or because they are SINless. If you dislike Tamanous so much, then instead of raging against them, why not turn your anger on the ones that make people like them necessary?

In organized crime, just as with any business, you provide a service. Sometimes that service is providing BTLs, 'grey' market medicines, prostitutes, or other contraband. Sometimes that service is the privilege of not having your shop burn to the ground with you tied to a chair inside it. For these services, payment is extracted, either in the form of nuyen, favors, or other services in exchange.]<<<<<

--Kusanagi Motoko (14:44:22/10-31-74)

[DWC]

>>>>>[I call it a lie because that's what it is.  Organized crime exists to steal from the community that hides it.  Whether it's by running rigged table games for gambling addicts, kidnapping little girls to placate the pedophiles, selling a shopkeeper in renal failure his freshly murdered neighbor's kidneys, or burning down a corner store because the owner had the audacity to let himself get victimized by a different group of bullying hypocrites.  I guess those count as services as long as you're not the guys getting cheated at blackjack, the girls getting raped, the people being killed for their organs, or the family who died in their shop.

I'll admit that for the three years that I wore a logo on my lapel, I got caught up in some shit that was almost as dirty as what I did as an independant contractor, but even then we didn't sabotage businesses to drive them into default on their loans because there was a lot more money to be made by seeing them thrive, keep paying interest and coming back for bigger loans to grow, so they could pay us even more interest.  Some of the marketing is exploitative, the food is definitely going to kill you in the long run, and Quality Control is all but lost in most consumer goods, but no one from Doc Wagon is going to show up and beat up your wife if you decide to switch your family to CrashKart.

Also, the mega I grew up in and the mega that I worked for are both totally open about being organizations dedicating to maximizing shareholder value.  They don't claim to be about "the greater good".  The ruthlessness is there, but not the denial.

Back when I wore a flag on my shoulder, there was even less of what your people do.  The Manor House didn't cause the 2nd LA earthquake to punish the city for joining the PCC rather than the CAS just like we didn't threaten to burn down Havana if the Caribs didn't let us refuel our helicopters after we flew into a tropical storm to interdict a bunch of death cultists who wanted to reduce the city to ashes and silence.

I'm curious.  Other than the loyalty that your gumi bought from you, where else have you been to compare it to?]<<<<<

--Vice (15:45:29/10-31-74)

[Smiley]

>>>>>[Alright, this has gone long enough without my two cents. First I'll start by stating that for a few minutes, I'm gonna place myself in the shoes of someone who buys into the principles of morality. Second, I'll say that Corporations are really bad for communities and so is organised crime. Third, as always, I laughed pretty hard reading most of these posts.

The Cosa Nostra / 'Ndrangheta / Stidda / Camorra families, the Triad Tongs, the Yakusa Gumis, the Bratva groups... ultimately all the same. They're all black, white and every shades of grey. But most of all, they're all bad, the lot of them. Some refuse to deal in drugs, others in human trafficking but all deals in illicit goods or services. For exemple, someone mentionned about horrible inhuman brothels and another user mentionned entire Yakusa Clans being wiped out for operating such inhuman brothels. Well, one of the biggest Gumi in Japan is notorious for operating such brothels. Not all Gumi do, but enough of them to say it's a problem and it's bad. Most of them are also very racist and elitist and principles they will apply to their own ethnicity will more often than not be forgoe for the others. For exemple, most Gumis refuse to force young Japanese woman into prostitution, declaring themselves saints amongst criminals and protectors of the virgin... But have no quarrel kidnapping Philipinno and Thai woman, move them to Japan (or elsewhere) and force them into prostitution. Some use crimes they say is victimless, presenting themselves as business man. Yet what they do is bribe government officials, rigging public works call for bids and making millions directly from public coffers by boosting costs, sometimes up to 40%, with extras and "unforseen complications not included in contracts". Taking money from public coffers is hurting communities. I have use the Yakusa for exemples, but again, they all do those things and all advertise themselves as protectors of communities. Also, and that one is my favorite, all of them, without exceptions, discreetly make unfortunate and innocent witnesses disappear. That is killing innocent people and those innocent people are part of the community. And always ask yourself why what they do is illegal? Because, most of the time but not without exceptions, illegal things are bad for people.

Personally, I don't give a drek. If nothing, they all did gave me work at some point. I have no problems with innocents suffering from corporations and crime syndicate activities. Hell, there is very few crimes I couldn't be charged with if someone had any proof to begin with. When it comes to bad people, I'm considered amongst the worst by moral standards. But, to those who seemed to be telling people that their own criminal organisations were good for whatever, I wanted to reply to them by: No. They're not! If you believe so than you're either ignorant or stupid! A lesser evil in most situations, okay, but good that just ridiculous.]<<<<<
--Smiley (17:17:12/10-31-74)

[Mirikon]

>>>>>[Only thing different between the syndicates and the megacorps is that one gets extraterritoriality, and the other doesn't. There's good and bad to both of them, and both of them make life difficult for the people at the bottom of the heap. Personally, I prefer the syndicates to the megacorps. If it comes to it, throwing a syndicate member off the balcony in 'self defense' is going to get barely a warning from the Knights, especially if you have 'evidence' showing that they shot first before they went flying. And it is easier to sort things out when a syndicate is angry at you than it is with a megacorp.]<<<<<

--Iceblade (18:47:23/10-31-74)

[Operator]

>>>>>[I'll take this time to offer some advice about dealing with crime syndicates, based both on my time in Japan's neon lights and Seattle's shadows.

1) Don't. (See #2 if this is impossible)

2) Keep your relations sparse and strictly business.

3) It's better for them to owe you favors.

An affiliate of mine in the Yakuza had an interesting dilemma - one of his subordinates had a brief episode of consience interfere with his duty of eliminating a business rival and his family. This kobun (let's refer to him as Taro) could not bring himself to off the one surviving child. Due to Taro's hesitation, the Yakuza were faced with a problem - the opportunity to kill this last witness without a loss of face had passed. However, he could not remain in Neo-T due to an aggressive police investigation.

I was approached by my life-long friend to enroll the child into a corporate-sponsored youth mentorship program. This wasn't very difficult for me to do - I worked as a security supervisor who was on the fast track to the position of CSO. It did require a substantial investment in personal time, and looking after a teenage boy was a strange experience when I was barely 10 years his elder. Though not implicitly expressed, the Yakuza owed me a commensurate service that I claimed three years later.

Taro received a merciful discount from his oyabun. Instead of paying for a serious fuck-up with his life, he paid with a finger.

P.S. The youth eventually drifted into Seattle a few years after I parted ways with my parent mega. It's a small world that we live in.]<<<<<
--Operator (18:20:35/10-31-74)

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

>>>>>[ Sure, NiSayer.  Keep telling yourself all that, kid, you and your precocious little sprite.  Meanwhile, those of us invested in the 'why' of it will continue to delve and discover just exactly what we don't know - hacker, decker, otaku, technomancer, mage, Great Dragon, and all. Nobody alive knows all the rules - and the more you learn, the more you realize that even if you helped write the rules, things aren't working the way you wrote them to be - which means even as you're examining them, they're changing in ways you never could have foreseen. ]<<<<<
          -- The Wyrm Ouroboros (01:01:01/11-01-2074)

[Mirikon]

>>>>>[For once, Wyrm and I agree on something.]<<<<<

--Iceblade (18:07:22/11-01-74)

[Kot]

>>>>>[A few things:

1. Not my sprite. Despite the rumors, I'm not a VK. Worked with one, yes, but the team was disbanded. Last thing I've heard he and our part-time shamgirl decided to make some techno-shaman babies. We'll see how that goes along.
2. I never wrote that. Just made an educated guess, based on my knowledge, experiences and soft. I'm the last one who'd consider himself omniscient.
3. I _was_ ingnorant when it came to magic. Getting your arm burned to a crisp tends to change that. I learned my lesson.
4. Shadowrunners can have morals too. We've basically retired, when we hit 'the treshold' where almost every job we could get involved getting our hands not just dirty, but tainted. I've killed people, both in the 'trix, and in the real world. I'm not a saint. But I'm almost sure I'm no child murderer either. Probably. You almost never know whom you've just fried.
5. I don't work with any crime sindicate. And I most probably won't. Yes, I know that cripples me as a part-time fixer, but still. As I stated above, one of those things that I've learned during my roadtrip was, that I'm not willing to sell my soul.

]<<<<<

--NiSayer (20:00:01/11-01-74)

[Mirikon]

>>>>>[*sigh* Losing an arm doesn't teach you anything about magic, other than the fact that you should have moved quicker to get out of the way. There is a limit to what a mundane can know about the Awakened world. Your magician friend likely gave you the simple version in any conversations you had. There are some who come to some level of understanding about magic and spirits, without having the Talent, but they are rare. It is easy to describe things in broad strokes, but you loose the nuance and the subtle differences when you do that. And when dealing with magic, the nuances and subtle differences are what is truly dangerous. Everyone thinks that a fireball is impressive, but that is a parlor trick compared to dealing with a free spirit. Diplomacy and etiquette change depending on the type of spirit, and what tradition (if any) the spirit comes from, as well as your own tradition. I have worked with technomancers before, and they say it is much the same between them and sprites, though they use terms that I'm not familiar with most of the time.]<<<<<

--Iceblade (15:23:22/11-04-74)

[Kot]

>>>>>[Iceblade, the point is, that could have been avoided. I just knew nothing about how magic works. Changing that helped a lot, and I'm not speaking about knowsofts only. It wasn't a lesson about magic, it was a lesson that taught me that I knew nothing. Damn, that should be common knowledge, we're living in the Sixth World, magic is becoming more and more common these days. So learning more than your mojo-slinging teammate can be bothered to explain is in everyone's best interest.]<<<<<

--NiSayer (16:16:00/11-04-74)

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

>>>>>[ Your point USED to be about how the Matrix and Magic all have baseline rules that never change, and how since we know those ... and now you're saying you know the baseline rules about how magic works?  You - or your sprite, which I suspect is indulging you - know the baseline rules about how the Matrix works?  Buddy, I was there.  Both times.  I know what we wrote, and I know what the 'Trix was built on.  I know what the baseline rules should be - and while most of the time they are, sometimes they aren't.  I am told that the same applies to magic.
          If, on the other hand, you didn't know the basics of 'GTFO' or 'Shoot First' when someone points nothing but a hand or a hard stare your way, then you deserved everything you got. If your point is that you were a fraggin' idiot, well, point made. ]<<<<<
          -- The Wyrm Ouroboros (15:00:00/11-04-2074)

[Mirikon]

>>>>>[Indeed. Everyone thinks they know what the rules are, but then something comes along that throws everything we thought we knew into question. Remember the fun and games from the Year of the Comet? Changelings, drakes, shedim, and dragon clawing his way out of the Rift? Or how about the artifact craziness earlier this year? Or the blood rain down in the PCC? Or the Twins, and the Deep Lacuna? NiSayer, things are moving at a rate that we aren't even sure we know what the rules are any more. Just because something is the rule today, doesn't mean that someone won't discover (or rediscover, if you subscribe to Ehran the Scribe's concept of mana cycles) ways to do all these things that are supposedly against the rules?

As far as the Matrix goes, used to be, you couldn't access the Matrix without a cyberdeck or home terminal. Then came the Otaku. Even they needed some ware to make the necessary links. Then came the technomancers. Oh, and don't forget the AIs, and all the other craziness that is out there. Where is the line between what we truly know, and what we merely think we know?]<<<<<

--Iceblade (20:09:22/11-04-74)