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Ideologies of the future

functionally, almost all states define themselves as a form of legal person, if only so that the fiction that they are subject to law is maintained.

Corporations are the epitome of such legal personhood.
 
I wonder about the economic benefits of turning your company planet into a de facto nation. Obviously corporate taxes can be removed, and whatever rules helps the company the most can be enacted, but that is likely not a huge benefit - one could always relocate the headquarters to a friendly nation, or make the nation friendly through a bit of lobbying and pressure. Running a corporate nation is not much different from running a planned economy (maybe this is the form of socialism in 2320? Employee-owned megacorp states?)

That reminds me of some of the voucher systems meant to deal with newly-privatized state firms in post-Communist Europe, especially Poland and Russia. In Russia, the vouchers ended up fleeing from the people who needed to sell them to the people who could afford to buy them, laying the ground for the famed oligarchs to come.
 
Trilon had a number of reasons for going the independent route. First, as an Outward corporation, they see the tight web of regulations governing Core corporations to be a leash, holding them back. Relocating to Kie-Yuma was simply the start of what they see as the next wave of human expansion, driven by profit-minded ideologies of expansion. They also see trade with the Pentapods as becoming vitally important, and have been trying to negotiate with several Pentapod nations to set up a Trilon enclave in Pentapod space, with a reciprocal Pentapod enclave on Kie-Yuma.
Trilon has it eye on the Bayern corridor, and possibly what lays beyond it. After all, they are all about expansion, including expansion of the Human potential.
 
That reminds me of some of the voucher systems meant to deal with newly-privatized state firms in post-Communist Europe, especially Poland and Russia. In Russia, the vouchers ended up fleeing from the people who needed to sell them to the people who could afford to buy them, laying the ground for the famed oligarchs to come.

Yup, a badly managed voucher system can be worse than no system at all. A real "state-corporation" might not make voting shares transferrable, and could have various restrictions on preferred stock ownership.
 
What other corporations are Outward corporations? Comspace Enterprises was mentioned as part of founding Tanstaafl, but I got the impression they had gone bankrupt. Rebco SAR is probably pro-expansion, as are all spaceship companies like General Service Transport. Tarr Interplanetary Excursions (Nyotekundu Sourcebook cover) and AMEC could be another two.
 
Yup, a badly managed voucher system can be worse than no system at all. A real "state-corporation" might not make voting shares transferrable, and could have various restrictions on preferred stock ownership.

But why would they want the mob to potentially have the power to subvert the system and create a "normal" democratic state?

Oligarchies can be quite functional forms of government, as Dubai demonstrates. Sometimes, as in the Dutch or Venetian republics of the early modern era, they can be rather pluralistic--the post-Communist model isn't the only kind.

All this discussion is making me exceptionally curious about Kie-Yuma. It's funny how that's the one French Arm world that keeps slipping my mind in discussion after discussion, even though it's the most interesting of all. Corporate oligarchies might have a good life expectancy on the fringes of human space.
 
Trilon isn't an oligarchy in the normal sense, since most of the owners are not people at all. I don't know if there were any canon listings of shareholders, but I would expect many of the shares being hold by big pension funds, other companies and investment funds. There are probably a few rich guys owning noticeable fractions of the shares, but they do not have to be very active shareholders.

The real oligarchs of Kie Yuma will of course be the Board and senior management - this is where the real fun starts! The shareholders are distant and likely not too involved in setting policy, but these figures will be doing the usual corporate politics. They are of course also the ones most likely to do something stupid that launches an adventure.

As for corporate democracies, isn't that exactly what co-ops are supposed to be? In practice power becomes concentrated to a leadership, but just like traditional democracies the worker/shareholders have a degree of power to reign them in from doing anything too stupid.
 
On the other end of corporate structures we have jointly owned starship and family companies like the Libertine traders. I have been doing a writeup of a settlement on the asteroid Sky Mountain in the Delta Pavonis system; here is the part about governance:

"Original surveying and construction was done in 2209 by Lixian Mineral Combine and the space construction firm Changcheng Orbital. LMC went bankrupt in 2261, and the local miner co-op managed to buy the facilities from the creditors and Changcheng. The Sky Mountain Cooperative formally runs under Manchurian law, but is de facto independent as long as it is too small and poor to be worth policing.

The Cooperative is owned by a number of “families” who originally bought the facilities. In everyday situations decisions are made communally through voting, but in the case of serious disagreement or key decisions the owner families have a right to vote internally as per their formal stock ownership. As a tradition, the leader of one of the owner families is used as a chairman during meetings."

I would expect this to be modestly stable, likely suitable for this kind of mini-citystate but not for anything larger (Tanstaafl comes to mind). One could imagine small settlements run as co-ops, splitting when they become too large and cumbersome. That might introduce a kind of "co-op nobility", people with extra resources setting up new habitats where they tend to have more to say than others. If you don't like them, go set up your own habitat.
 
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