I guess crime in autonomist habs boils down to who demands something, who can supply that something, whether or not it is against the rules, how they meet, and how they get away the crime. Lets take morph smuggling on Titan as the example. Demand for physical bodies is a common demand considering the setting. Who is supplying the morphs probably isn't that important considering that government on Titan is working to give everyone who wants a morph a morph, so production of morphs would be high or very high. This would mean that there would be no shortages of opportunities to smuggle morphs, in fact there would likely be many groups on Titan smuggling morphs. These groups would likely have people who could find people willing to make deals for morphs or the opportunity to cut ahead, maybe vote whatever way they want, get them access to restricted information, or maybe cause trouble for another group. How do they get away with their crimes? Maybe past favors, or maybe they own the indenture contract for a family member of a guy who works security. The profit? The ability to stay in business (most transhumans are immortal...), the ability to live well, and maybe outside forces are willing to pay real money (such as the currency of the inner system) for whatever resources or political pull they can get. I think we need examples of crime that are difficult to do in autonomist space so we can work solutions. Solving the problem of how crimes work in general in those places is really hard. Once you figure out how to do some crimes, you might be able to work your way to do other crimes or even create organized crime.

DivineWrath wrote:

the opportunity to cut ahead

I would imagine crime being a lot like this kind of stuff. Just because they are autonomist doesn't necessarily mean chaos in all circumstances so crime could just involve things as simple as cutting in fabber lines or monopolizing QE transmission. And as ORCACommander said, one way to look at it might just be in the lens of establishing some sort of government where a small group of people control something that benefits the masses.... EDIT: Another thought, depending on the scope, it may be an interesting situation where they are straddling habitats where something is criminal in one place and not another. So say you were smuggling into the inner system.....

The problem with crime and @'s is that, barring the extreme stuff, its based on what you're allowed to do. Is it really crime, if you're allowed to bring in smuggled bodies? Thats the only real way to do it. As soon as you become disliked on a hab for your nefarious deeds, you get simple majority voted locked out food makers, and o2 and forced to leave. And if some how the crime syndicate got simple majority rule over a hab, everyone not part of the crime syndicate would leave. If they're barred from leaving, then thats something entirely different then having some crime on an @ hab.

In terms of things that outer system habitats would consider antisocial? Rep system gaming is going to be the bread and butter. Want to bump your rep up? Have access to something they want? Give them what they want (which could well be credits, if you're coming in from Sunward, and they have connections in places that use money,) and they'll set their complicated and sophisticated botnets to work rep-bumping you. They may even furnish you with a prepared ID that already has a high rep. Getting people access to things without their neighbors knowing they have them. This is going to tread a fine line, of course, since on many autonomist habitats, the venn diagram of things that can be made on a habitat at all, and things that will make people very curious to know what you're doing with that thing you just printed out in the public fabber, is already pretty small. So expect this to be things like explosives, biowarfare agents, nerve toxins and the like. Of course, supply too much of this stuff, it's going to get out that it was you, and they're going to airlock your stack. Egos, of course, for whatever nefarious deeds, though soul-traders should be warned, because in autonomist space, that'll piss people off so badly they're likely to burn all the copies of your ego they can lay their hands on. Mainly, it'll be subversion of the normal system of doing things; does a guy who goes by the name "One-hundred seventy-six thousand four hundred" thinking that nobody will realize it's 420^2 piss you off so badly that you want to mess with him? Scratch a guy's back, 176,400 will find many of his requests processed as slowly as possible. Got low rep but still feel a burning desire to have X? Scratch a guy's back, and your next request for X will be expedited as if you had 85 @-Rep. Don't want to clean the recycling tanks but still want to get the rep-bumps for doing it? Help a guy out some way, and the records will show you're doing it, while you're vegetating in simulspace, or maybe your morph will get ghost-puppeted while you zone out/play AR games/whatever.) Or, conversely, do you want to get a lot of shifts doing the shitty work that you don't mind doing to get a psuedo-legitimate edge in the @-rep game? That can be arranged, too.

uwtartarus wrote:

mukulchadha wrote:

(pseudo-intelligent wiki'ed spam)

What?

Its a spambot. It and a couple others are infesting Off-Topic, this is the first post I've seen outside there though. On an amusingly meta note, spam could be considered criminal, simply from a mesh load on limited networks (like small autonomist habs). Depending on the hab, memetic warfare could be anywhere from frowned upon to extremely illegal (though pretty hard to prove). Manipulating people is infringing on their precious autonomy, after all...

uwtartarus wrote:

What does organized crime do in autonomist space?

(I still have to read all the replies, but off the top of my head): I've wondered about that myself. Here is from a discussion I had on an EP PBP I was doing a few years ago:

Quote:

Regarding more Eclipse Phase inspiration, I have to point out two non-science fiction inspirations: "The Wire" and "Boardwalk Empire". Why these two? Because these two shows have so much insight on the culture, framing, and economics of criminal enterprise. Well, part of it is that my character was/is a gangster, so knowing the mindset of gangsters is useful. I've also been trying to wrap my mind around "how would criminals operate if they lived in an area with no state?" Like, a lot of criminal enterprise is driven by drug laws, whether alcohol in the 1920s or cocaine in the present day. I guess part of it is my confusion over how anarchism would be implemented. Not an anarchist myself, but it seems like there are a lot of contrasting philosophies within the label of "anarchism". I guess the scenario that comes to mind would be that you are running your society like an open-source software development group. So, anyway... I imagine criminal enterprise on Locus to be something like: [list=1] [*]Some Triad gangsters set up shop on Locus, start testing new drugs. Said gangsters will then send drug design to compatriots on Mars, to manufacture and market. Mars having laws and a big population, allowing for big profit margins. Most Locus people are okay with drugs being designed on their habitat: nobody's being forced to consume them, everyone who is involved is involved of their own free will. Maybe a few Locus people really disapprove of hard drugs (have a loved one who lost their mind to them), so the gangsters lose a bit of @-rep, but are still able to operate. [*]a rival Triad gang sets up shop on Locus. There is some violence between the two gangs. It is confined mostly to knifings. No firearms, no explosives: nothing to harm the habitat overall, nothing to hit bystanders. But people do get a bit worried that the violence may escalate. They lose a bit more @-rep, some Locus people offer to mediate. [*]at this point, the two rival gangs either move their squabble off-Locus, or de-escalate. Or, they escalate. They do start using firearms. A bystander is hit. Some idiot tosses a grenade at the other gang's headquarters. At this point, the two gang's @-rep starts getting trashed. Several local neighborhood councils order them all to leave Locus. Most of them do not. A spontaneous posse forms, a "smart mob" with guns, perhaps with a bit of organization from the Locus militia. They kill any remaining gangsters who refuse to leave. [/list] I guess the other big question is "why would they start being violent in the first place?" Like, why don't two different, say, barbecue joints start knifing each other? In the scenario I just layed out, a few different reasons I can think of would be: 1. limited supply of petal-addicts on Locus: they are competing over test subjects 2. Their culture already tends to attract violent people: since they are doing illegal things on, e.g., Mars, they are used to only having "might makes right" settle differences: if a rival gang shoots up their petal-making factory on Mars, they can't go to the cops about it. 3. There is big money involved in their enterprise. So big stakes = people really don't want to lose.

Alternatively, besides exploiting criminalized "victimless crimes" like drug-pushing, there are still plenty of room for cartels to profit from legit *bad* behavior in places like Locus: you have a TITAN artifact. You have lots of people who pay handsomely for TITAN artifact. Even "stateless" societies generally don't want TITAN artifact in their hab. Rival gangsters steal your TITAN artifact. You can't ask the militia for help now! (If you've seen The Wire) Remember that scene in Hamsterdam where the drug dealers ask the cops for help recovering their drugs? Replace "the cops" with "the hab populace" and "drugs" with "[other undesirable thing like a nuke]".

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Like, why don't two different, say, barbecue joints start knifing each other?

That reminded me of this story: http://nypost.com/2012/04/15/cluck-off/

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Around 1930, Harland Sanders ran a Shell gas station in a rough section of Corbin, Ky. The station prospered despite the rough locale — he kept a gun under his cash register for protection — and intense competition from a man named Matt Stewart, who ran a Standard Oil station down the road. The men’s mutual animosity grew as Stewart painted over one of Sanders’ signs, and Sanders responded by threatening to “blow [Stewart’s] goddamn head off.” Sanders repainted his sign but got word that Stewart was painting over it again just as he was meeting in his office with two Shell supervisors. The three men — all armed — raced to the scene, and Stewart drew his weapon and fired. One of the Shell managers was killed instantly and Sanders “jumped into the breach and under withering fire grabbed his fallen comrade’s gun . . . [and] the future Colonel unloaded with true aim and hurled hot lead into Stewart’s shoulder.”

Quote:

at this point, the two rival gangs either move their squabble off-Locus, or de-escalate. Or, they escalate. They do start using firearms. A bystander is hit. Some idiot tosses a grenade at the other gang's headquarters. At this point, the two gang's @-rep starts getting trashed. Several local neighborhood councils order them all to leave Locus. Most of them do not. A spontaneous posse forms, a "smart mob" with guns, perhaps with a bit of organization from the Locus militia. They kill any remaining gangsters who refuse to leave.

The part where this breaks down for me is where the smart mob forms. How many people would actually get out there and start shooting gangsters? Because if the first push fails, those are now a bunch of angry gangsters. So they start killing anybody who stands up to them, mexican cartel style. They go on a stack-cracking rampage. At best you've got a civil war, at worst your hab falls to tyrants, and good luck getting it back. No amount of @-rep dings are going to fix that. The other issue with the smart mob idea is how often they form against people who are more or less innocent. Mob is not exactly a... comforting word, after all.

And for me that where it fails. Organize crime, is to delicate for @-habs rimward. Either what they're doing is so small potato it doesn't matter. And if it gets to the point where it is an issue, then they get kicked off the hab, or the hab is taken over. I dont see the socioeconomic forces to self perpetuate organize crime.

I think the sousveillance present just about everywhere but the Jovians (which have regular surveillance) would put a bit of a damper on protection rackets. Some guys come around offering "protection plans" in an anarchist hab, then some guys who refused get their stuff or morphs wrecked, even if there was no footage of the acts of destruction the guys offering "protection" would likely be the first ones shoved out the airlocks with torch and pitchfork. Actually, come to think of it, aren't the private law agencies in Extropia essentially accepted protection rackets?

Well, there can't really be organize crime on Extropia. On Extropia you're allowed to subscribe to your own laws. And different organizations and individuals can subscribe to mutually exclusive laws. So why would Organzie Crime subscribe to a body of law then then break?