World Setting

[Black Leviathan]

even a few feet of water would actually destroy most coastal cities. It would stop sewage systems for functioning and it would erode building foundations. It could mean that less than 10% of the city was under water but that 10% would be a health and infrastructure nightmare. If it happened in the course of three years it would be a destructive momentum that would take massive amounts of capital to stop. If it happened during a plague or a viral outbreak it would make cities like San Diego, new York, or Washinton DC into necropolises.

In-land ports are a fallback that would allow trade, especially along riverways where channels don't have to be dug or trees cleared but the infrastructure to build a sea-port would take decades. There would likely be these Global Warming boomtowns that are up-river from river outlets where there's lots of piers and warehouses under construction and the rivers are being dredged for large hull ships. Meanwhile the old ports would be barely above water likely connected to continuous ground by shakey floating bridges, half-sunken cities full of those that can't afford to move living in lawless mega-poverty. The more trade shifts to these growing inland ports the more desperate things become in New York and Baltimore where the next rainstorm could trigger a domino fall of old skyscrapers full of squatters trying to scrounge and farm.

[Agemegos]

When there are no governments capable of enforcing corporations law the corporations will develop into something else. The authority of the general meeting, the board, the C suite, and the regional managers all depend on law, and when the law cannot be enforced the authority relationships will change, drastically. Probably the chief of corporate security will liquidate the C suite, abolish the board, and ignore yhe shareholders, but some regional managers might break away.

Corporations are creatures of the law, and cannot exist without government.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

When there are no governments capable of enforcing corporations law the corporations will develop into something else. The authority of the general meeting, the board, the C suite, and the regional managers all depend on law, and when the law cannot be enforced the authority relationships will change, drastically. Probably the chief of corporate security will liquidate the C suite, abolish the board, and ignore yhe shareholders, but some regional managers might break away.

Corporations are creatures of the law, and cannot exist without government.

It might work like the late Roman Empire, when local military (or law enforcement) forces, no longer supported by taxes from a central authority, turned to requisitioning supplies from local producers and offering them "protection"—which in some measure turned into real protection, often against other local forces.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

When there are no governments capable of enforcing corporations law the corporations will develop into something else. The authority of the general meeting, the board, the C suite, and the regional managers all depend on law, and when the law cannot be enforced the authority relationships will change, drastically. Probably the chief of corporate security will liquidate the C suite, abolish the board, and ignore yhe shareholders, but some regional managers might break away.

Corporations are creatures of the law, and cannot exist without government.

Agreed! You can have plutocratic oligarchy, Russia and China do now, but pure plutocracy can't exist for more than a very short time. Government needs to be strong and reasonably honest for real corporations as we know them to exist.

[Astromancer]

One way to bring some painful unemployment into the setting, and with it desperate people vulnerable to cult exploitation, is robotic automation of vertical farming. If outdoor agriculture is hampered by climate change and blight, vertical agriculture would have no rivals and the rural population would be desperate and hungry. They'd be forced into the cities. The urban poor would look down on the refugees and, because the rural poor have been trained to sneer at the urban poor, this would be returned with interest.

There aren't that many people employed in agriculture now compared to the 1930s but looking at how the Okies were treated would give you tons of ideas.