| From: | TopCat <topcat@******.net> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Killing in Shadowrun... |
| Date: | Sun, 26 May 1996 02:56:53 -0500 |
>- crippled their armed forces, didn't they? Serbia didn't even have
>trouble getting oil.
>The oil embargo on Rhodesia was enormously effective... not.
An arms embargo is not a total trade embargo, nor is an oil embargo.
>Embargoes raise prices, but unless you get a situation as clear-cut as
>Iraq - who basically antagonised everyone around, including all their
>neighbours - you see almost no long-term effects. Cut off South Africa's
>arms and you create Kentron and Denel, and suddenly you have
>competitors.
Embargos raise prices, yes. The right embargos (food, medical supplies)
cause serious problems. Those which cause problems will be effective.
Those which do not, won't. Full-scale trade embargos are crippling in the
extreme. Corps can pull that sort of power down.
>Food? Most of the grain states are still in the UCAS.
And owned by megacorps. Megacorps didn't build little islands off the
coasts when they went extraterritorial, they walled off their currently
owned pieces of formerly-UCAS land. Whenever they pick up new pieces, guess
what? It becomes extraterritorial under the megacorp banner, too.
>And let's see... summary nationalisation, anyone? Knocking down all
>corporate satellites above the UCAS? Armed cordons around all "foreign"
>factories, interdicting all goods? Corporate freighters sinking at sea?
The UCAS doesn't have the power to handle that scale of operation, they
could barely handle Chicago and Washington D.C. at the same time, let alone
corporate scale assets. The corps would rain thor-shots on them before they
even fired their first shot. Shortly thereafter would come near-total
surrender to the corps. Which is why the UCAS would never do anything this
stupid. My hypothetical answers to the hypothetical question of the UCAS
invading a corp are correct, but would never happen because the UCAS isn't
stupid enough to try it.
>This all adds up to a massive, damaging and unprofitable pissing match
>in which the UCAS' goal is simply survival and the corporations intend
>to make a profit. War, for a corporation, is a no-win game. They win by
>not fighting, and not pushing nations into situations where a nation
>loses less by war than by negotiation.
They win by a single show of unsurmountable force and never have to do it
again, there is no war. Just a few buttons pushed, a couple million spent,
and the surrender of a nation to corporate power. Ever read Hardwired?
Remember what the corps did there? Now call them thor-shots instead of meteors.
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"I was thinking of the immortal words
of Socrates, who said: I drank what?"
-- Real Genius
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TopCat at the bottom...
