Fwurg

[The Lifebringer Clans]

A moral question arose on the private negotiation thread. Because I believe it stems from a game design decision, I will pose it here. The problem is this:

'A nation specializes a zone using a corporation originally founded by another nation, then uses these resources to commit immoral acts. (i.e. uses bioweapons against civilians, destroys worlds, kicks puppies, etc.) To what degree is the original founding nation of that corporation responsible for these acts?'

I believe this problem arises because the situation regarding corporations is necessarily simplified for game-technical reasons.

IRL, the corporation itself could make decisions, and therefore it would have moral responsibilities. Example: Chinese government wants access to Google's user data records, to track dissidents and imprison them. Google decides to withdraw from China. If Google does not take action, they would be morally responsible.

In game, corporations cannot act on their own. Therefore, I assumed this sort of moral responsibility would not be modeled, and that in case of atrocities being committed, the Union as a whole would intervene. Other people assumed this moral responsibility transfers to the founding nation.

Is one of these views correct? Or is this an IC difference of opinion? (If it's an IC thing, I'll take it back to the thread and let my nation make its case.)

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I'll post my assumptions about this here to offer further insight for the admin: I'm currently operating under the assumption that all corporations are effectively extensions of the faction that founded them. I also assume that part of the specialization is development of technologies and applications that are partly funded by the faction that founded the corporation (hence the enormous investment of 5000+ , which doesn't even translate into 'normal' corporation scale in my opinion).

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Decided to go with the in-game answer. Wall-of-text alert.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I request that the original question still be answered by admin for clarity; not only is it still relevant regardless of IC reasoning -- the exact meaning of a specialized zone needs to be clarfied. I'm at a loss at this moment what this entails. Should it be seen as a dependance of the original corporation (since taxes are derived from it?), or is it just a clean exchange of methodologies and technological applications? (Either answer can have far-stretching political implications)

[Mercury]

Though the rules are set for how intergalactic trade functions, you can decide how the economy of your world functions. It can be a Smurf-like Marxist utopia, a specialised free-market economy like My Little Pony and even a racially segregated feudal society like in the Thundercats.

Because you have such freedom in how your worlds economy is shaped, corporations have deliberately been kept somewhat vague as to their exact economic function and status. After all, a Corporation on one planet may be fully owned by the government and on another it may be completely privately owned and anything in between.

Regardless, players OOC and their nations IC have complete control over the Corporations they found. Be it by simply ordering it so, by creating laws or by flexing the military muscle, Corporations are restricted by their government. After all, if they were not bound by their nation, they wouldn't be paying taxes to it.

So how does this affect specialised zones?

When a Corporation specialises a zone, it does not do so with its own money. Rather, the host government pays for this specialisation.

In practice this means that the Corporation decides what it needs to build to produce its product, but the Corporation must hire local construction companies, contract local employees and keep to local laws regarding things like worker safety and rights. Additionally, the corporation is bound by the laws of the nation of origin.

This can cause clashes. A slave labour based market economy would be an unlikely host for a company of Marxist utopian origins. That's not to say its impossible (perhaps the company uses only droids, perhaps they subcontract, perhaps they set aside their beliefs, etc.).

However, it could lead to uncomfortable questions, especially from other Marxist utopian nations who may find it disturbing that a nation they thought shared their outlook on labour laws would let its own companies work with slavers.

Likewise, the slaver nation that invites the Marxist company might find that other slaver nations find this invitation questionable, because it might cause slaves to start demanding all sorts of rights and privileges.

But that addresses the act of exchanging zones in the first place. Not what for cases that would happen after zones have already been exchanged.

I cannot speak for PC worlds. They make their own decisions. NPC worlds however can and will judge you by association. If you exchanged one information zone, they wouldn't judge you as harshly as if you had exchanged fifty zones over twelve different corporations, since you wouldn't be as intertwined of course.

Regardless, NPC's will look not just at your own actions, but also at the actions of your friends, be they friends by political cooperation, by trade, by zone exchange or even by having the same state religion.

The advantage of trading goods would be that you can end the association, which in turn ends the negative effect that radiates towards you. Zone exchanges are permanent and you cannot stop negative radiation from affecting you. Of course your statements and actions also influence this, so if you exchanged one zone and then strongly state you disagree with a later policy, this helps alleviate the effect.

Note that the association is a two-way street: if a nation you trade or exchanged zones with does good things, then this will reflect upon your world as well.

Now, regarding withdrawing a Corporation: this is not supported by the rules. For OOC reasons, it would be unfair to do so as it effectively destroys a zone another player paid for. For IC reasons, such a withdrawal would cause the corporation to suffer losses at a level that are simply unacceptable.

Google is an unlucky example - though Google can make money selling products in China, their main production is not in China, but in the United States. This is where products are developed. In effect, Google has no 'zones' in China.

Foxconn by comparison is a Taiwanese company that has 13 megafactories in China and it employs hundreds of thousands of people there. It could not withdraw from China even if China and Taiwan were to go to war. And even if it declared it did withdraw, the Chinese factories could just continue to produce Foxconn products which would be identical to the Taiwanese Foxconn products.

Though players may make agreements amongst themselves (for example to remove specialisation from a zone), and a DM might aid in resolving exceptional situations, in general once you exchange a zone, its forever. If it later turns out to be politically unfortunate, that's a consequence you may have to learn to live with.

Does this clarify somewhat?

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Clear to me.

[Iladriel]

Or zones could split form the corporation, so that the actions of the controllers of those zones don't reflect onto the corporation.
The employees of those zones would have the knowledge to operate and maintain those zones, but not to build new zones.

This way you can cancel agreements IC, but you can't use it OOC to destory zones

iladriel

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Clear to me too.

Iladriel, first off, welcome.

Second, I think it's intended to not be that easy to disavow your trading partners. It sounds a bit like providing a country with nuclear technology and scientists. Even if all those scientists get new passports, it's still kind of your fault. ;>_>

[Iladriel]

your example of nuclear technology is not entirely true. You built a nuclear powerplant for them, you didn't give them the technology to build one for themselves.

iladriel

edit: typo

[Veolian Commonwealth]

But local contractors built the thing, and local employees run the thing, so they do have the knowledge that you gave them.

I think it's also an issue of scale. You specialise a zone and a zone is ridiculously big. Compare it with the Earth, a medium planet with a Type IV atmosphere, oceans and in a goldilocks zone. It has 19 zones. So you do not help them build a few nuclear facilities, you help them build enough facilities to power half the planet.

And it's also an issue of subject. Say you help them with the production of nuclear bombs instead of power plants? You just built 1/19th of the planet full of factories for the creation of weapons of mass destruction... Wouldn't want them to use those on your friends now, would you? Your friends will probably blame you, even if you say "But it's them, I only showed them HOW to build the bombs!"

(And just to be a language nitpicker: it's 'built' not 'builded')

[Mercury]

Iladriel, that's a good suggestion, thank you!

At this time, a player must already get permission for every Corporate zone they built, so you cannot for example build a second one of a corporation zone without permission from the corporation owner, even if they have one already. Exchanging zones is cheaper than trading goods in many cases, but it comes with the additional restriction of being intertwined with the other nation, which is sort of a bit of a balancing factor.

That being said, in an extreme case (such as two nations that exchanged zones going to war with one another), I think your suggestion might very well be an option, so I am keeping that idea in mind should the situation ever come up. For now, we don't have any actual companies yet so I'm not worried about it until someone actually wants to make such a split.