Something worth noting is that indenture contracts probably aren't decades long, except maybe for uplifts. The whole point of an indenture contract is to extract wealth from what amounts to slave labour, but ultimately it is better to eventually release the indenture than to keep them on eternally. An employee whose hopes are far away is largely unmotivated, whereas one who can, through diligence, see tomorrow arrive today is going to work twice as hard. Plus, every released indenture is now looking for work, meaning they're stimulating the economy. Slavery is actually really awful in a modern economy as a business model. It's super-inefficient because it leads to consolidation of wealth instead of its movement and, while movement of wealth means you have to pay your employees, it also means other people paying their employees. Those employees can, in turn, buy your products. Most indentures who were reinstanced right after the Fall have probably been free for over half a decade by 10 AF. The ones who are going through indenture contracts right now are probably the ones who were only recently reinstanced. The average indenture contract for a skilled worker (like a researcher or designer) is probably only 1-2 years, maybe 3 if they're getting a slightly better morph. For a relatively unskilled labourer, it's probably 3-5 for a basic splicer, tending towards 3 if a pod. There probably aren't any contracts that offer synths because they're just too cheap; the person would work it off too quickly and it might encourage more people to see biomorphs as not being the real top-of-the-line.

Well it'll end for the PC eventually regardless. Eventually Eclipse Phase will hit post scarcity in raw resources and manufacturing. It'll become more expensive to keep scarcity then to allow the prices drop to defacto nothing. Capitalism will seek out new raw resources. It'll prefer to have its own source for any raw resource required. It'll work to make the acquisition, processing and logistics of that as cheaply as possible. It'll do the same with its manufacturing. Eventually the PC will be so successful it'll have to switch out of scarcity based economics. I cant tell you when. But eventually those extra solar colonies will mature. I'd say 100 years.

FWIW: Depends on the time frame you're talking about. Russia isn't the same thing as the USSR. Same geography but not exactly the same economic/political policies. You've kind of got to narrow down to the years to be sure which flavor you're talking about. ;)

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

THIS needs challenging, though. Wealth disparity DOES do real harm, especially generational harm. The same wealth, more evenly spread, improves quality of life more greatly for more people, while also turning them into avenues by which further economic boosts can be generated for the community because people below a certain wealth bracket are more likely to buy locally and thus invest in their local community. It's not just "envy" that some are wealthier than others; things could be better for everyone and that they are not is real harm, even if things are better than they were.

Redistribution by force may temporarily result in more people being able to enjoy some wealth in total, but will it really work out in the long run, especially considering how economies of scale work? For example, before the industrial revolution, the largest single reservoir of wealth on Earth was arguably arable land. Before the industrial revolution, arable land was widely distributed among a huge number of small-time farmers. During the course of the industrial revolution though, farmland was gradually concentrated into fewer and fewer hands until all the farming was done by less than 2% of the population in most developed countries. Did this massive concentration of wealth lead to famine and people dying in the streets? Not at all, developed nations now have more food than they know what to do with because large farming corporations were able to invest huge sums of money to develop cutting-edge agricultural technology, and their economies of scale allowed them to drive down the cost of food to where, as a share of income, it's a mere fraction of what it was. Of course, those people who were no longer farming went off to work in (or to run) factories, and by the end of the industrial revolution so much new wealth had been created in the manufacturing sector that arable land no longer held a dominant share of the nation's wealth. However, there are two historical examples of countries who went the other way. Countries who stripped farmland away from rich landowners, and redistributed it to groups of communal farmers (and to political cronies). China in 1958, and Zimbabwe in 1999. Both resulted in economic catastrophe, and mass starvation. That's not to say that inequality has any inherent good. Obviously if one single person held all the wealth, and everyone else none at all, that would cause problems. But history seems to show that any healthy economy will have some natural wealth inequality merely as a consequence of how economies of scale and exponential growth functions operate. It's not inherently good or evil, it's just a consequence of the math. Things are often the way they are for a reason, and that reason usually isn't "because I enjoy watching you peasants suffer." Of course, Mao and Mugabe probably didn't *intend* to starve their countries either, but they were meddling with forces far beyond their comprehension.

Apologies for responding with the whole post quoted and chopped up, but I always find it makes it easier for me to reply.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

Redistribution by force may temporarily result in more people being able to enjoy some wealth in total, but will it really work out in the long run, especially considering how economies of scale work?

This is demonstrably false, though. I wager that, by "redistribution by force", you mean the forceful seizing of land and property and goods and then passing them on to others and, in that respect, you're absolutely correct. Taking the wealth a given person has accumulated and just passing it to someone else and expecting the system to carry on but better is doomed thinking. On the other hand, "redistribution by force" is also an effective descriptor for taxation and spending on public works and services; the taking of someone's wealth under threat (because if you don't pay it, you WILL suffer for it) and redistributing it among the population at large. In such cases, we can see endlessly that not only does taxing and spending not result in catastrophe, it can and typically does directly benefit the populace at large. The idea that there can only be pure capitalism or absolute tyranny is a false dichotomy, one that I don't think you intended to impose but one which your statements skirt. It is entirely possible to reduce wealth disparity, reduce suffering, and increase quality of life for everyone without declaring the proletariat need to seize the means of production from the bourgeoisie.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

For example, before the industrial revolution, the largest single reservoir of wealth on Earth was arguably arable land. Before the industrial revolution, arable land was widely distributed among a huge number of small-time farmers. During the course of the industrial revolution though, farmland was gradually concentrated into fewer and fewer hands until all the farming was done by less than 2% of the population in most developed countries. Did this massive concentration of wealth lead to famine and people dying in the streets? Not at all, developed nations now have more food than they know what to do with because large farming corporations were able to invest huge sums of money to develop cutting-edge agricultural technology, and their economies of scale allowed them to drive down the cost of food to where, as a share of income, it's a mere fraction of what it was. Of course, those people who were no longer farming went off to work in (or to run) factories, and by the end of the industrial revolution so much new wealth had been created in the manufacturing sector that arable land no longer held a dominant share of the nation's wealth.

This doesn't really accord with history. Prior to the industrial revolution, most people were farmers, yes, but land ownership was not widespread. The United States is pretty much the one exception to this in the West, and that's because of the capacity for westward expansion. Much of Europe, meanwhile, existed with lands owned by lords who rented out to tenant farmers. We see the origins of radical egalitarian movements following the Enclosure Acts in England around the time of the English Civil War, with the True Levelers coming into existence precisely to oppose that land was already highly concentrated in the hands of a few people and the previously common lands were being closed off and given to friends of the king. Don't confuse the number of people who worked the land with the number of people who owned land, because the two are very different. The very idea of actually owning land, instead of merely keeping it in trust, was outright considered blasphemous in much of Europe pretty much up until the 16th century (and, even then, continued to be afterwards, but those who decided to worship Mammon found a much more rewarding god). As for whether this caused famine and people dying in the streets... Actually, it did. I keep bringing up Britain, and England in particular, because that's where I have the most experience, but there it was most viciously evident in the Irish potato famine, where constant displacement of tenant farmers, combined with a failed crop, left poor Irish farmers starving to death. Likewise, during the Industrial Revolution, so many people flooded the cities because farm work was no longer available, and many of them starved or froze to death; the rise of the workhouse occurred entirely because there were lots of people and not enough land or jobs to supply them. France, notably, suffered from this as well in the 1790s. After two years of terrible weather, the old rights held by the landed gentry who owned most of the land and the mills needed to grind grain into flower did not budge; the already starving peasants were starved further still. "Hang the bastards from the lamp post" became the national song of France because of cruel agricultural practices that, while endurable in good times, drove people to murder when things got rough. And this is without mentioning all the incidental suffering that went along with any of these things. Now, the thing is, all of this awfulness and suffering doesn't stop any of this from being the path that led to the world we have today. Agriculture going from being the default state to big business meant more people were free to work other jobs; it created a consumer culture that was the fuel for the advancements in production of goods that led to the society we have today. Yet every bit of progress, every step, was paid for absolutely in blood. Safety regulations, living wages, worker protections, a 40 hour work week, all these things are things people have actually died for; not merely spent time picketing and protesting and such over but actually been killed for demanding. Capitalism isn't some absolute virtue, especially not when it empowers people who pour huge amounts of money into suppressing and even killing those who try to further liberate and emancipate humanity from the pains inflicted by a cruel universe. It produces good things for people, but it does so as a by-product, not by design.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

That's not to say that inequality has any inherent good. Obviously if one single person held all the wealth, and everyone else none at all, that would cause problems. But history seems to show that any healthy economy will have some natural wealth inequality merely as a consequence of how economies of scale and exponential growth functions operate. It's not inherently good or evil, it's just a consequence of the math. Things are often the way they are for a reason, and that reason usually isn't "because I enjoy watching you peasants suffer."

I would say that, if that inequality had no negative consequences, it would be neither good nor evil. It is morally neutral when considered as an island. It does have consequences, however, and so it is morally good to try and limit the excesses of such inequality. Perhaps not to eliminate them entirely - the incentive to excel is one of capitalism's better features - but the idea that any one person should have ascendancy and undue influence over the lives of others is a recipe for toxicity. As for the reasoning, I don't think someone has to be a sadist to cause suffering. If you have the choice between building on a prime piece of environmentally-sensitive land and one that is less desirable but not catastrophic to build on, you don't need to cackle and laugh giddily at the thought of destroying those wetlands; you can rather banally simply write a letter to go with the more desirable location because you want to keep your profit margins higher.

Sorry, my English isn't enough good to try explain better, but capitalism and oligarchy are different things, the true free market is the opposite of oligopoy. Do forget state is Robin Hood stealing from richs to give the poors, but the king Jhon Lackland collecting taxes. Anticapitalism doesn't want to distribute wealth but to monopolize all economy, and then only "friends" of the party can be rich. Of course the corporatocracies can be antagonist in the fiction, but the true evil corporatocracy is controlled by state or political parties. * Do you know about the politic revolving doors? * Have you read Thomas Sowell or Ayn Rand?

Quote:

the true free market is the opposite of oligopoy

It's hard to say, though, isn't it? If there's never really ever been a free market — if the forces of regulation have always intruded on the glorious ideal, and any bad outcomes in modern capitalist economies is blamed on "imperfect" markets, then no one can make strong claims about how a perfect market really would turn out. Much like those who say that large-scale communism has never been attempted, and thus can't be judged by any real examples, this transforms free market capitalism from an economic system into a genre of fan fiction.

I dont think you can blame an economic model on the Fall. The TITAN were sapient, and no one knew then came across a ETI, and uh, murderfucked everything after that. The Exstrugent Virus isnt a product of Capitalism. Well, I guess it could be. Its origins are unknown.

Milton Friedman is also really good at putting economic ideas into simple, easy to understand terms. Highly recommended. However, the idea that a free market must forbid any charity or altruism is also patently false. At the most basic level, a free market is little more than leaving people alone and letting them do whatever they want. So if someone wants to spend their own money helping the poor, or they want to form a group of people who voluntarily pool their money to help the poor? That is a perfectly fine free-market thing to do. If someone happens to own a cornucopia machine, and decides he has no need to spend money or have a job because he's quite satisfied with what his machine can produce? He's free to make such a choice, it's his property and he can do what he likes with it. Of course, in-game the PC are hardly paragons of the free market. Their ban on CM machines is an obvious example of their short-falling. Extropia is a bit closer. A perfect free market is likely impossible, of course. Partially because the government isn't the only entity that can violate your property rights, so even an anarchy like Extropia isn't able to perfectly guarantee them. In fact, if you're getting as close as possible, the government's primary role is to ensure that *nobody else* violates your rights. However, unlike Communism, Capitalism doesn't have to be perfect to work. In fact, a tiny drop of capitalism introduced to a formerly communist country can turn the whole thing around and undo much of the damage inflicted by communism's failure, as China has recently discovered. It can even work entirely on accident, when the government has no intention of following capitalist ideals but their citizens just keep trading with each other on their own. It's quite user-friendly that way. So while it is true that no country has ever had a 100% free market, the good news is we don't need to. We could get by fairly okay with as little as 10% free or 20% free, but history has empirically demonstrated that the freer we are the richer everyone becomes, therefore it stands to reason that we should strive to get as close to 100% as we can. After all, if neither system can be perfectly realized, shouldn't we go with the one that works just fine even when your implementation is massively flawed?

LuisCarlos17f wrote:

Sorry, my English isn't enough good to try explain better, but capitalism and oligarchy are different things, the true free market is the opposite of oligopoy. Do forget state is Robin Hood stealing from richs to give the poors, but the king Jhon Lackland collecting taxes. Anticapitalism doesn't want to distribute wealth but to monopolize all economy, and then only "friends" of the party can be rich. Of course the corporatocracies can be antagonist in the fiction, but the true evil corporatocracy is controlled by state or political parties. * Do you know about the politic revolving doors? * Have you read Thomas Sowell or Ayn Rand?

We only learn by trying, eh? Kudos for trying to learn other languages. If I understand you correctly, though, I strongly disagree. There's some fairly broad brushing in your post that needs to be addressed. Autocratic systems tend to be prone to corruption, this much is absolutely true. Indeed, all power has the potential for misuse and corruption, but autocratic systems concentrate that power by definition. As such, once the system is corrupted, there are very few checks on it and very little which may be done to reform it after the fact. However, not all systems which seek to check capitalism's excesses are autocratic. This is pretty demonstrable with social democracies around the world. Likewise, the reduction of government control does nothing to guarantee protection from abusive power and, indeed, tends to produce the opposite effect; the company towns of the coal companies during the Great Depression and the black lists speak as long testament to the abuses the powerful may lay upon the masses. The system did eventually change, but only through legislation and violence and a great degree of suffering. I've read a fair amount of Rand - I was a big fan of her in my youth - but she is prone to oversimplification and assumptions that do not fit reality. Her belief system was, like that of many philosophers, suited only to an idealized world of rational actors who all act alike and to a scrupulous morality. Atlas Shrugged itself, her idealized vision of the future, was predicated on this notion of the superhuman Great Man who drove society forward; who, upon recusing themselves, would cause societal collapse. Yet the very villainy she used as her opening example of abhorrent government control was price collusion and monopolization - something Theodore Roosevelt was famous for fighting precisely because it was something the businesses of the time loved to do. Trade guilds and similar monopolistic groups mark human history extensively prior to the modern age because monopolization and artificial inflation of prices are so eminently profitable. Rand was an interesting writer, but her political theory has been picked apart many times over the decades. tl;dr: Yes, politics can be corrupt, but that hardly means humanity becomes saintly in its absence. Far more often, the opposite.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

the idea that a free market must forbid any charity or altruism is also patently false. At the most basic level, a free market is little more than leaving people alone and letting them do whatever they want.

I don't think anyone brought up altruism in this particular discussion, though, or made the Friedman-style assertion as such. What I will say, though, since you brought it up, is that if altruism is an expected feature of human behaviour such that it fulfills the gaps in what society provides and what people need, that expectation is manifestly incorrect. Certainly, altruistic behaviours might not hurt you, but they're not the ultimate goal or the behaviour subject most to maximization by market forces.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

Of course, in-game the PC are hardly paragons of the free market. Their ban on CM machines is an obvious example of their short-falling. Extropia is a bit closer.

The PC is, indeed, not an absolutely free market. They don't ban CM machines, though; just require they be restricted so as to ensure that they don't print blueprints that haven't been licensed or which could potentially be hazardous. Extropia, meanwhile, is depicted in a surprisingly flattering manner, for what it would likely be. I have a hard time envisioning Extropia as a place where debt slavery is anything but the norm for a substantial portion of the population.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

A perfect free market is likely impossible, of course. Partially because the government isn't the only entity that can violate your property rights, so even an anarchy like Extropia isn't able to perfectly guarantee them. In fact, if you're getting as close as possible, the government's primary role is to ensure that *nobody else* violates your rights.

A perfect free market is possible only in the same circumstances as a perfect communist system: One in which all actors are rational and internalize the exact same values to the exact same degree, such that they always effectively act upon them. These values must, in turn, all include an absolute knowledge and respect of property rights. Since this isn't possible, a perfect free market isn't either.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

However, unlike Communism, Capitalism doesn't have to be perfect to work. In fact, a tiny drop of capitalism introduced to a formerly communist country can turn the whole thing around and undo much of the damage inflicted by communism's failure, as China has recently discovered. It can even work entirely on accident, when the government has no intention of following capitalist ideals but their citizens just keep trading with each other on their own. It's quite user-friendly that way. So while it is true that no country has ever had a 100% free market, the good news is we don't need to. We could get by fairly okay with as little as 10% free or 20% free, but history has empirically demonstrated that the freer we are the richer everyone becomes, therefore it stands to reason that we should strive to get as close to 100% as we can. After all, if neither system can be perfectly realized, shouldn't we go with the one that works just fine even when your implementation is massively flawed?

You really need to characterize what you mean by "work". Certainly, a capitalist system is generally capable of self-perpetuation, but what cost that self-perpetuation has is important. (It also needs to be pointed out that China, a communist nation, works by your definition, suggesting that a communist nation need not be perfectly so to succeed either.) Your claim that "the freer we are, the richer everyone becomes" is not a historical truism. It holds true in some senses but only - and importantly - up to a point. Nowhere is this more evident than at the turn of the last century, the economic collapse of the Great Depression, and the Union Movement. Unregulated business led to a massive rise in wealth disparity and saw huge expansions in suffering masses inside cities, and it took hard fighting on the part of labour organizers and subsequent protections written into law to ensure their success. Yet once these goals were achieved, prosperity manifested much more readily, as wealth flowed down from isolated pockets at the top and into the pockets of the consumers at the bottom. When free trade arose, those economic protections became worth the paper they were printed on, as manufacturing jobs were lost overseas or, as the modern trend appears to be, automation. Salaries became desynchronized from rises in efficiency and the effective value - and effective income - of workers has stagnated ever since. This has happened with a rise in freedom, not a decline. This is without even going into discussions of things like pollution laws or global warming. Talking about cost externalities with capitalism is just painfully exhausting. Now, as a footnote to all of this, it needs to be said that capitalism is powerful. Like nuclear power, when harnessed effectively, systems of incentives can make humans do the most with least time and again. Again, like nuclear power, a lax attitude and unwillingness to properly regulate how we handle that system can lead to devastation for large numbers of people.

MrWigggles wrote:

I dont think you can blame an economic model on the Fall. The TITAN were sapient, and no one knew then came across a ETI, and uh, murderfucked everything after that. The Exstrugent Virus isnt a product of Capitalism. Well, I guess it could be. Its origins are unknown.

The chaotic conditions that led to the various major powers developing the TITANs, though, caused by the massive climate damage that capitalism inarguably wreaked, can absolutely be laid at its feet. The exsurgent-infected TITANs were just the finishing blow.

I have no idea what point LuisCarlos is trying to make.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

You really need to characterize what you mean by "work". Certainly, a capitalist system is generally capable of self-perpetuation, but what cost that self-perpetuation has is important. (It also needs to be pointed out that China, a communist nation, works by your definition, suggesting that a communist nation need not be perfectly so to succeed either.) Your claim that "the freer we are, the richer everyone becomes" is not a historical truism. It holds true in some senses but only - and importantly - up to a point. Nowhere is this more evident than at the turn of the last century, the economic collapse of the Great Depression, and the Union Movement. Unregulated business led to a massive rise in wealth disparity and saw huge expansions in suffering masses inside cities, and it took hard fighting on the part of labour organizers and subsequent protections written into law to ensure their success. Yet once these goals were achieved, prosperity manifested much more readily, as wealth flowed down from isolated pockets at the top and into the pockets of the consumers at the bottom. When free trade arose, those economic protections became worth the paper they were printed on, as manufacturing jobs were lost overseas or, as the modern trend appears to be, automation. Salaries became desynchronized from rises in efficiency and the effective value - and effective income - of workers has stagnated ever since. This has happened with a rise in freedom, not a decline. This is without even going into discussions of things like pollution laws or global warming. Talking about cost externalities with capitalism is just painfully exhausting. Now, as a footnote to all of this, it needs to be said that capitalism is powerful. Like nuclear power, when harnessed effectively, systems of incentives can make humans do the most with least time and again. Again, like nuclear power, a lax attitude and unwillingness to properly regulate how we handle that system can lead to devastation for large numbers of people.

By "work" I mean more than mere self-perpetuation. After all, North Korea has been perpetuating itself for quite some time, at the expense of its enslaved citizens. A working system is one that is able to adequately feed its people, which facilitates upward mobility, encourages technological advancement, and drives economic development such that the standard of living can be improved across the board. In other words, a working system is one that generates wealth and prosperity. The faster wealth and prosperity is generated, the better the system works. Communism nearly killed China. Before they abandoned it, it was literally killing them by the millions. To say that Communism "worked" in China because market reforms pulled them out of the fire, is like saying that lead is nutritious because you ate it for a while, got sick, and then got better after you stopped eating it. As for the stagnation of middle class income you're worried about, I can assure you that is in fact a result of a decline in freedom. Specifically, the middle class' freedom has been significantly reduced in recent decades with a proliferation of regulation regarding their businesses and day-to-day lives. The average American today is less free than they were 50 years ago. For example, in many states you now need a license to cut hair. There has been a significant increase in the number of similarly petty, unnecessary regulations. Every reduction in freedom has slowed the growth of their prosperity, and there would be no surer way to throw that growth into a decline than to further curtail their liberties. If we want to see the middle class grow again, we should deregulate them.

That's why the key words there are "petty and unnecessary". Any regulation will introduce overhead to the system. People's choices will be curtailed by it, which can lead to unintended consequences. You will also have to hire and pay people whose only job is to enforce the regulation, paperwork will have to be tracked, and actions will be delayed as more and more decisions must be run past the regulators before they can be implemented. Opportunity for corruption is also created, as the more burdensome regulations become, the more attractive it is to bribe the regulators to bypass them. This attraction is on both sides, because the larger bribes are seen as "worth it", the regulators are more tempted to accept bribes. The accumulation of this overhead is why it is important to pare regulation down to only what is absolutely necessary. When introducing a new regulation, it's important to consider whether it is really, truly necessary. If it's not, it is just wasting everyone's time and money. That's the essence of minimalism: to intervene only when absolutely necessary, and otherwise let people solve problems on their own. After all, people *can* do things on their own. Just because you want something done, doesn't mean you need the government to do it.

Once again, I think we're talking past each other. The original question was whether Hypercorps in Eclipse Phase are portrayed as 'inherently evil'. It's the economic version of the 'Why are Jovians bad guys' question that pops up fairly frequently. Given the post-Fall timeline, and Humanity's past experiences with megadisasters, I think EP's take isn't particular skewed. Hypercorps are everywhere — they're a legal mechanism, and everyone from a random scrapper to a megaconglomerate qualifies as one as long as they have the right paperwork. The power bloc of the Planetary Consortium is trying to hold onto power and influence in the inner system, with military force backing IP law and enforced scarcity mechanisms. That dynamic doesn't demand that Hypercorps be inherently evil, it just requires a casual perusal of human history.

Quote:

"The word "free" applied to public services, contains the most rude and puerile of sophistry. I am surprised that the public is deceived by that word; Because there is nothing that is free in the absolute sense. Public services cost everyone, and because everyone pays in advance is why they do not 'cost anything' when they are received"

I hate to break it to you, but no one believes that "Free Lunch" means that a sandwich was created ex nihilo by a hungry person's desire for sustenance. It is no more sophistry than insisting that stateless, might-makes-right anarchy is "Free." Realistically, turning this discussion of EP's Hypercorps into a Randian rant against the evils of collectivism is pretty silly. If you really want to do that argument justice, moving it to the Off Topic folder might be a good idea.

Anytime have you wonder about how would be cyberpunk fiction if it had written by minarchists or anarcho-capitalists? You can create a evil businessman characters, but not all businessmen should be evil, you can add a bad cop in your story, but not all cops should be bad, you can use a corrupt politician in a module, but not all politicians have to be corrupt. * APEX corporation from the videogame "Homefront: the revolution" may be a good example of "evil corporatocrazy". My opinion is the worst corporatocracies are the cover and puppet companies created and controlled by keynesian dictatorships. They are the worst because their CEOs and bosses aren't true entrepreneurs but "bureaucrat". They don't want to be competitive, to offer the best quality-to price ratio, but to impose its monopoly or cartel/oligopoly, with illegal price agreements. They don't want to be loved by the consumer, but favors by the politicians. Other example of evil corporation (for your rpg modules) is the tentacle of secret lodges or mafia (organized crime), for example the trade federation from Star Wars was manipulated by the siths, or Abstengo Industrie, controlled by templars from Assasin's Creed games, or Wolfram & Heart from Angel teleserie (Buffy vampire slayer universe).

Indenture is really a lot like the mandatory military or civil service the gas giant powers do, it's just shadier thanks to the PC's generally kind of weak central regulations. Basically everyone with a transitional economy is using indenture or something similar.

*nods to ThatWhich* That's pretty close to my take on it as well. There's an element of coercion in any system that demands work in exchange for food / shelter / necessities. As it turns out starvation is a pretty convincing gun to aim at any worker's head to get them to do work. If you don't have a survivable option that involves *not* doing work then coercion is implicit in the situation. (It doesn't need to be a pleasant option, just one that isn't bartering for your life.) In general, the lack of regulations and transhumanities own greed result in systems waiting to be abused. But the same could be said of right-to-work laws (aka 'right to be fired' laws) in the US or of the emotional labor for social coin aspects of gift economies. Show me a system and I can probably show you where it will, if not kept in line by an outside force, fall apart on a moral and ethical level. In the setting, the transitional economies of the PC do have some variety, Morningstar isn't a bad direction to look for a less-evil example. And there are certainly going to be over-the-top evil corporations too... PCs need bad guys to fight. I think key to understanding what's going on in any of these setting choices is that science fiction, all speculative fiction really, is written in context and dialogue with the concerns of the real world at the time of writing. So yes, some of the setting pieces are going to be framed as irredeemably bad so that PCs can go at them and have a good time without having to think too deeply. (Looking at you Jovian Republic.) Some pieces are going to be exaggerations of their real world equivalents to serve as warnings of what could develop, some will be fantasy - hopes for what could develop. And some of the pieces are going to be complicated mirrors of the real world stripped of obfuscation so the reader can more clearly see them for what they are.

Take the perspective that any network connected transhuman is TITAN or even exurgant infected. The only safe place is inside the radiation belts of Jupiter. Uploaded minds and AGI's are not anathema in themselves, but anything that has touched the larger mesh could be a threat. The rest of transhumanity is literally in the "eclipse phase" of the infection. Alternately: cast them in the same light as any modern, regressive, medievalist religion. Or provincial, protectionist, autocracy. Those guys aren't necessarily "evil", they're just self-motivated and short-sighted. About 50% of your own countrymen (wherever you are) are probably examples. Not bad people, just human.

To be honest, I think a big part of why the Jovians are seen as Bad Guys is because transhuman fiction doesn't tend to attract a lot of highly religious social conservatives, in my experience. I suspect if it somehow did, you'd see lots of them identifying with the Republic and finding it quite laudable.

To the points that 'ThatWhichNEverWas' brought up, for me that just sounds like framing the Jovians internally, domestically as awesome. And If I were to run a Jovian Game with Jovians, that would pretty easy. But Jovians are diametrically opposed to the rest of the setting. A tolerant Jovian, is a poor Jovian. Its like having an Empiral in a Rebel group Revel era starwars game. the Empirial should be trying to turn in the rest of the party, and work counter to their desires. They're xenophobic, which generally means they are also anti immigration. They have a robust military but its only used to protect its own space, and to exact toils for using Jupiter for gravity assists. LIke maybe, I am too dour on Jovians, but if there was a @-hab with a major problem and a Jovian Military Assests were able to reach them to render aid, I dont think the Jovians would do so. At least not being nagged or bribed by the Commonwealth to do it. The most positive thing that Jovains do for transhumanity, is they are probably the only Polity with a positive birth rate. The other positive thing, depending how you lean with the Firewall politics, is they prevent monoculture and allow for Transhumanity as a whole to tackle the same problem with different enough prospective.

If the Jovians are..."dystopic" or "anti-utopic" is because that is the design by the game creators, but after the players can destroy the canonical background and change them. In my setting robotic beta are allowed by the Jovians, but only a organic morpho for only a ego.

Yea. That is defiantly a saving grave for the Jovians. Like the Ultimates, the Jovians stand with Transhumanity even if they bicker over nearly thing. But a threat against one of them is a threat against all of them. I can totally get behind that. They would totally throw in their weight with the COmmonwealth Navy, and PC hastily built one on any threat, thats going to consume Sol.

I'm risking repeating what others already told but damn it: Maybe I am reading it wrong but nothing in the write up of Jovians strikes me as evil. They are portrayed as the bad guys only if you accept the Anarchist societies as pinnacle of human way of life. Then they are bad guys for seeing it and rejecting it. But that is, as most people here agree, author bias. When you take an objective look at the faction and its ideals they're internally consistient with what they're doing in reality. There is no bullshit like "democratic" elections in former communistic countries and North Korea. There is no bullshit like in current America where the government agencies take away peoples right to privacy in the name of statistically insignificant terrorist threats. Yes, their focus on security slows down their social and technological progress, but that is the price they are willing to pay. People will die from cancer and other afflictions, but when thats the price for societal near immunity to basilisk hacks, exurgent virii and TITAN infiltrators the price is worth it. You can say that is fear mongering, but unlike our USA the danger is real and significant. Big brother society and fascist state will not probably care about improving its citizens level of well being, but it will surely care about their survival. In game terms: How many of you played the standard Firewall mission? This Anarchist hab was carefree, tolerant and heaven for all. Now have an antimatter grenade, go clean up the exurgents.