In this debate, I think it is time to dig out the old Traveller's Digests...
not having mine at hand...
I would say that corporate government would be best represented like an entrepot government...like the Rhodes encampments in South Africa or Hudson's Bay holdings in Canada before the selling to Canada.
But, I do also like the idea of a planet being used for the benefit of shareholders. This would be a privatization utopia, save that all things really go back to a single source - the company. Could we see the theories about Japan Inc. being the paradigm for corporate government?
Japan still proves to be a more elusive concept, even for the average Japanese...it just is what it claims to be - democracy, however imperfect. But, as are all democracies if you read your C.B. MacPherson, until a participtory democracy returns.
The really interesting question for F-Tech is where is borders between culture, politics and economics. I have always presumed from GDW sources that these were Centrally Planned Economies. Therefore, when information is hierarchical there are blockages, whose task is it to remove those blocks? At the same F-Techs relay upon minimal bureaucracy. Therefore, I think the assumption was that computers could take the role of planners.
side note: (An idea floated by The Economist at the time of Central Planning in the USSR entitled "The End of Planning?" came up with this idea and has always been floated in the so-called Socialist Calculation Debate...and except for The Economist and diehard Stalinists, the idea has always stated as a failure due to the velocity of Capital movements to run a country's economy...now imagine a planet's...)
Getting back to the issue at hand, like all forms of government in Traveller it needs to be broken down into almost microscopic detail for it, to understand its workings. Better to say, that government remains a mystery. When my players confronted a UPP they knew that is what is what the Scout service said in...* Governments changed frequently in ITU. The real challenge is to confront players with an Alien (even if it is human) regime to baffle their way through it. Then comes the issue of trying to get a handle on Interstellar governance forms, of which, players ought to only have the vaguest of sketches...but, we will see when Loren releases the Nobles book, as I did not really like the T4 version, we will see what constitues the (quasi-)cannon.
*And, maybe the Scouts were bribed, coercised by the powers that be. Plus, what was the think at time of the survey. Measuring Government is not as easy hydrographics or even Law Level. It is all these grey Social Science areas that make the Traveller universe exciting compared to monolithic games like Fading Suns (although, even FS can be tweaked through the Lost Worlds campaign). Maybe, BITS ought to mount a PDF supplement to their 101 Governments for other times and other places, as the voice of T4.
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