Shadowrun: The Revolution

[Almaz]

From my personal experience, it's naive to think that governments inherently care more about people. In my country, the government ended up scaring away all investors through negligence, corruption, and instability.

So you live in the USA?

[Shrieking Banshee]

So you live in the USA?

No. Well yes now, but not what I was talking about. I came from Ukraine TO the USA.

From my experience where I live people have a disproportionately negative view of their own country to the point, it gets somewhat sickening.
I know that blind nationalism can be bad, but blind pessimism can absolutely ravage a country, more than even the most corrupt politicians ever could.
Being in a constant negative state doesn't get things fixed. It induces either cultural apathy or chaos.

[Username17]

The actions of organizations are chosen by people in those organizations, and the personal goals of individuals are always at odds with the goals of organizations. A state's interests are served by growing the economy, improving the lives of the citizenry, strengthening international partnerships, and advancing technology. But the state doesn't take actions because they are in its interests, a state takes actions because actual human officials tell the state to act.

Now most organizations have various means of trying to encourage decision makers to make decisions that advance the goals of the organization. And in a lot of the history of the world, those systems have worked very poorly. Ideally there are like elections and shit, but in a lot of cases those elections are essentially formalities and members of the ruling party can just ransack the place.

Shadowrun Megacorps apparently have strong boards and such that prevent executives from taking actions that can't be justified as being in the corporation's interest. And so they behave much more "rationally" than most states and almost all corporations in history. It's just that due to their immense size, what's "rational" for the corporation is sometimes to behave like a Scandinavian nanny state and sometimes to behave as a vulture capitalist robber barony, and often to do both things at the same time just a few kilometers apart.

-Username17

[Longes]

Shadowrun Megacorps apparently have strong boards and such that prevent executives from taking actions that can't be justified as being in the corporation's interest. And so they behave much more "rationally" than most states and almost all corporations in history. It's just that due to their immense size, what's "rational" for the corporation is sometimes to behave like a Scandinavian nanny state and sometimes to behave as a vulture capitalist robber barony, and often to do both things at the same time just a few kilometers apart.

-Username17

Do they though? I always felt like Shadowrun portrayed its megacorporate executives as personally steering the ship wherever they want it to go, boards be damned.

* S-K is Dunkelzahn and Dunkelzahn is S-K and him using S-K as his wallet and club never goes wrong and instead leads to S-K rising to the very top.
* Ares is often portrayed as a struggle between Knight and the other guy who isn't Batman and so not worth remembering.
* EVO is ran by a spirit and anyone who disagrees disappears.
* Aztechnology has no executive Personality, but it's an evil megacorp of evil that's ran by an evil shadowy cabal and always loses but doesn't suffer anyway.

[Almaz]

So you live in the USA?

No. Well yes now, but not what I was talking about. I came from Ukraine TO the USA.

From my experience where I live people have a disproportionately negative view of their own country to the point, it gets somewhat sickening.
I know that blind nationalism can be bad, but blind pessimism can absolutely ravage a country, more than even the most corrupt politicians ever could.
Being in a constant negative state doesn't get things fixed. It induces either cultural apathy or chaos.

Oh, I agree! I just was making a rather terrible joke given the recent spate of closed-borders, "surely protectionism will work the 3rd time we try it" nonsense. Sucks about Ukraine!

[Shrieking Banshee]

Oh, I agree! I just was making a rather terrible joke given the recent spate of closed-borders, "surely protectionism will work the 3rd time we try it" nonsense. Sucks about Ukraine!

Yeah, that's simply put a bad/terrible idea. But I have been told there is more stuff to the issue (At least with relations to china) so I'm trying to withhold judgment until I understand the bigger picture.

However by default Protectionism is a bad idea.

However paradoxically and disturbing to me, allot of the same things that I witnessed rot down Ukraine to what it is today, I witness growing in the USA from proponents that view themselves as the ultimate distributors of righteousness and goodness and this isn't a dig against conservatives.

[PrometheanVigil]

Oh, I agree! I just was making a rather terrible joke given the recent spate of closed-borders, "surely protectionism will work the 3rd time we try it" nonsense. Sucks about Ukraine!

Yeah, that's simply put a bad/terrible idea. But I have been told there is more stuff to the issue (At least with relations to china) so I'm trying to withhold judgment until I understand the bigger picture.

However by default Protectionism is a bad idea.

However paradoxically and disturbing to me, allot of the same things that I witnessed rot down Ukraine to what it is today, I witness growing in the USA from proponents that view themselves as the ultimate distributors of righteousness and goodness and this isn't a dig against conservatives.

Chaos is the only true answer...

(Natch.)

China's an interesting one to watch but not for the Red Dawn redux bullshit that people keep pushing, failing to understand the strategies its been pushing for the last decade. Critical to its success in the upcoming decade is its proliferation and security of its Maritime Silk Road. Basic premise is loan big money to ethically devoid countries (dictatorships, fellow autocracies etc...) knowing full well they'll reneg and then, when they inevitably do reneg, enforce the part of that contract that say "that seaport you've got there, that's ours now". This ensures China has control of the waterways between East Africa and mainland China, both commercially and militarily. Intriguingly, Amazon applied the same fundamental strategy to achieve the global dominance it has today: take a sizable upfront loss to make a much greater long-term gain. And in both cases, it's worked and continues to.