Comment my megacorporation

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Did I miss anything?

Only that the corporation's founders somehow have technology centuries ahead of the rest of the world without raising the world's TL at the same time.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Show me that rule and think that maybe that rule is made for us to be able to break it.

P. B473, column 1: The rules below cover realistic innovation at the inventor's tech level—or one TL in advance of that, at most. For rules governing larger-than-life inventors who can build more fantastic gadgets, see Gadgeteering. . . .

P. B513 gives rules for raising local TL, but they are only for raising it to an advanced TL that you have already mastered. If you don't have the skills, you will first have to learn them. If the skills don't exist, you will first have to invent the relevant technologies, and then teach them to yourself on an on-the-job basis; and there will probably be more than one advanced technology required for each field. We don't have rules for those, but it's going to take longer and be more difficult than the things we do have rules for.

Of course you can give your inventors Gadgeteer, but that makes it a cinematic campaign, not a realistic one.

[ErhnamDJ]

This is a really cool setting idea. Is there any way they could have inadvertently created an AI that's pulling the strings? That could explain how they're able to manipulate people so easily and have almost a psychic-like foresight for how events will play out.

If you know how the effects of your actions will trickle through society, you can manipulate the two party system and make one of the parties collapse. You can send in a plague that knocks out the supreme court justices. You can do almost anything. And this would all be "comic book" realistic--that is, the kind of thing that appears plausible if you don't tug too hard at the seams and see what begins to unravel.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Did I miss anything?

Probably, because there's a lot, but that's the high level outline.

I think the original logic was

Q: How did you get that incredibly advanced technology?
A: We spent vast amounts on researching it.

Q: How did you get all that money?
A: We sold the products of the incredibly advanced technology.

and then when it was pointed out that the process of getting all the money would run afoul of antitrust and other laws,

Q: How did you get the money to research that technology?
A: We changed the law.

Q: How did you get the political power to change the law?
A: We used incredibly advanced technology to influence political outcomes, and we spent vast amounts of money on doing so.

I think this all seems circular.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by whswhs

P. B473, column 1: The rules below cover realistic innovation at the inventor's tech level. . .

I dont see the problem, that works for me.

Originally Posted by whswhs

local TL...

So locals are TL8, just what I said.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Of course you can give your inventors Gadgeteer, but that makes it a cinematic campaign, not a realistic one.

No thanks. Gadgeteer is forbidden.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Probably, because there's a lot, but that's the high level outline.

I think the original logic was

Q: How did you get that incredibly advanced technology?
A: We spent vast amounts on researching it.

Q: How did you get all that money?
A: We sold the products of the incredibly advanced technology.

and then when it was pointed out that the process of getting all the money would run afoul of antitrust and other laws,

Q: How did you get the money to research that technology?
A: We changed the law.

Q: How did you get the political power to change the law?
A: We used incredibly advanced technology to influence political outcomes, and we spent vast amounts of money on doing so.

I think this all seems circular.

No, no, no, you got it all wrong. They had some money to start with, Jeff Bezos style, each of them coming from different sources such as XX century MMORPG games, movies, artwork and performances, then they invested that money to develop new technologies, the cheap ones coming first, and they used those technologies to make revenue, which then they proceeded to reinvest. At some point, you dont specify when, they get a lawsuit about posible monopoly practises because of the merger, so they invested some of the money into running the political game.

[AlexanderHowl]

The entertainment sector is just not that large. Jeff Bezos is as wealthy as he is because his company sells physical products beyond entertainment. If he had just kept to entertainment products, he would not be the wealthiest person on Earth. Anyway, even if the US dropped the ball, the EU is quite willing to break up monopolies.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

I dont see the problem, that works for me.

So they can use those rules to innovate at TL8 or TL9. But they totally don't apply to inventing anything at TL10 or TL11. There are only two ways to do this: take Gadgeteer, or raise the TL for the entire society, so that you have an industrial base to support the innovation.

And if you raise the TL for the entire society, they no longer have a huge one-sided advantage in economics or politics.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

This is a really cool setting idea.

Thank you!

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Is there any way they could have inadvertently created an AI that's pulling the strings?

Yes! They have countless AIs running at the same time, and quantum TL10 computers (a factor of 10^6). They even have an AI secretly running the entire corporation as if it was the CEO.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

If you know how the effects of your actions will trickle through society, you can manipulate the two party system and make one of the parties collapse. You can send in a plague that knocks out the supreme court justices. You can do almost anything. And this would all be "comic book" realistic--that is, the kind of thing that appears plausible if you don't tug too hard at the seams and see what begins to unravel.

I completely agree :)

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There are only two ways to do this: take Gadgeteer, or raise the TL for the entire society...

No, no, you can also raise their personal TL.