General MegaCorps in Traveller

[Condottiere]

There are cadet branches from the Imperial line; how much do they hold, or would that be accounted for by the aristocracy in general?

 

[Merc465]

IMHO, beyond the _immediate_ Imperial Family (anything beyond uncles/aunts and first-cousins, as a rule-of-thumb), _cadet_ branches of the Imperial line ought to number in the nobility/aristocracy in general rather than the Emperor/Empress his/herself, as "courtesy" nobles if nothing else.

There are cadet branches from the Imperial line; how much do they hold, or would that be accounted for by the aristocracy in general?

 

[BRover]

Not sure if this belongs here, but it might be valuable to get a better feel for Megacorp Pseudo-organization.

The last few days, I've been looking up some novels I dimly recall through the misty fogs of several-decade old memories. Found a few lost gems!

One was Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, one of his "Juvenile" series. I recall especially this scene, distinguishing "ownership" and "control" in corporate terms:

Eventually a pattern began to emerge. The business was Rudbek & Associates, Ltd. So far as Thorby could tell this firm did nothing. It was chartered as a private Investment trust and just owned things. Most of what Thorby would own, when his parents' wills were proved, was stock in this company. Nor would he own it all; he felt almost poverty-stricken when he discovered that mother and father together held only eighteen percent of many thousand shares.

Then he found out about "voting" and "non-voting; the shares coming to him were eighteen-fortieths of the voting shares; the remainder was split between relatives and non-relatives.

Rudbek & Assocs. owned stock in other companies -- and here it got complicated. Galactic Enterprises, Galactic Acceptance Corporation, Galactic Transport, Interstellar Metals, Three Planets Fiscal (which operated on twenty-seven planets), Havermeyer Laboratories (which ran barge lines and bakeries as well as research stations) -- the list looked endless. These corporations, trusts, cartels, and banking houses seemed as tangled as spaghetti. Thorby learned that he owned (through his parents) an interest in a company called "Honace Bros., Pty." through a chain of six companies -- 18% of 31% of 43% of 19% of 44% of 27%, a share so microscopic that he lost track. But his parents owned directly seven per cent of Honace Brothers -- with the result that his indirect interest of one-twentieth of one per cent controlled it utterly but paid little return, whereas seven per cent owned directly did not control -- but paid one hundred and forty times as much.

It began to dawn on him that control and ownership were only slightly related; he had always thought of "ownership" and "control" as being the same thing; you owned a thing, a begging bowl, or a uniform jacket -- of course you controlled it!

The converging, diverging, and crossing of corporations and companies confused and disgusted him. It was as complex as a firecontrol computer without a computer's cool logic. He tried to draw a chart and could not make it work. The ownership of each entity was tangled in common stocks, preferred stocks, bonds, senior and junior issues, securities with odd names and unknown functions; sometimes one company owned a piece of another directly and another piece through a third, or two companies might each own a little of the other, or sometimes a company owned part of itself in a tail-swallowing fashion. It didn't make sense.

This wasn't "business" -- what the People did was business... buy, sell, make a profit. But this was a silly game with wild rules.

Something else fretted him. He had not known that Rudbek built spaceships. Galactic Enterprises controlled Galactic Transport, which built ships in one of its many divisions. When he realized it he felt a glow of pride, then discovered gnawing uneasiness -- something Colonel Brisby had said... something Pop had proved: that the "largest" or it might have been "one of the largest" builders of starships was mixed up in the slave trade.

That seems a nice snapshot of the sort of chaotic organization that megacorps would use.
Only, in practice, it would be far, far more complex, with companies sharing ownership slices, overlapping boards of directors, all in a complex version of corporate spaghetti-bowl organization charts . . .

OTOH, is it really needed in-game?
Gripping hand, the descriptions of Megacorps strike me as far too simple and straightforward.

 

[Proneutron]

Not sure if this belongs here, but it might be valuable to get a better feel for Megacorp Pseudo-organization.

That seems a nice snapshot of the sort of chaotic organization that megacorps would use.

Berkshire Hathaway is the real life example.

 

[Condottiere]

Berkshire is almost benign, since it's out in the open, compared to the ones lurking in Panama and the Cayman Islands.

 

[coliver988]

Not sure if this belongs here, but it might be valuable to get a better feel for Megacorp Pseudo-organization....<snip>
OTOH, is it really needed in-game?
Gripping hand, the descriptions of Megacorps strike me as far too simple and straightforward.

I think it could be used in-game in some interesting ways. Corporate espionage takes a whole new meaning when it is against a company that it actually owns; hidden connections may need protection or exposure; payoffs may cross companies; favors for one company may translate out to another; a patron is the secret owner of a megacorp through a series of shell companies...

Usage all depends on the sort of game you play (well, that's true pretty much of everything) If nothing else, it can bring in some world building background and allow for a persistent thorn in the players side that has a single entity behind it despite coming from all over.

 

[Proneutron]

Berkshire is almost benign, since it's out in the open, compared to the ones lurking in Panama and the Cayman Islands.

So are those

 

[Condottiere]

That's money laundering, and tolerated because intelligence agencies and treasuries would like to know where the money is, where it came from, and where it's going, not necessarily who owns it.

Speaking of money laundering, you could get a loan shark to finance your spaceship.

It's clear that in this game, there's no way you can cover the outrageous interest rates, so the agreement would be that as long as you carry cargo and personnel with no questions asked, you don't have to pay that interest.

 

[Grav_Moped]

That's money laundering, and tolerated because intelligence agencies and treasuries would like to know where the money is, where it came from, and where it's going, not necessarily who owns it.

Speaking of money laundering, you could get a loan shark to finance your spaceship.

It's clear that in this game, there's no way you can cover the outrageous interest rates, so the agreement would be that as long as you carry cargo and personnel with no questions asked, you don't have to pay that interest.

You can, but only at Jump-1. A Type A, or even a reasonably-built Type R (ditch the Launch for more cargo space, swap out the Size C drives for the Size B ones it really should have) can clear a profit -- not hand-over-fist profit, but more than enough to cover the loan -- even at Cr1000/ton/jump under LBB2 rules. Anything much bigger than a Subsidized Merchant will have difficulty filling its cargo hold under the LBB2 cargo rules on an average (no +-DMs) world though.

Jump-2 isn't profitable at those rates until TL-15 and 5000Td (Z drives are magic), but that ship can't fill its cargo hold with even the absolute best-case conditions and rolling nothing but sixes.

 

[Proneutron]

That's money laundering, and tolerated because intelligence agencies

Nope. Money laundering is an ACTIVITY not a banking location.

 

[Condottiere]

You need permissive jurisdictions in order to carry it out.

As regards my previously mentioned interest rates, those were specifically the ones that loan sharks charge, not Traveller's default five percent, which if I remember correctly calculating out over forty years, is half the amount you're repaying the banks.

If you take one step back and look at the whole picture, starships are really cheap, maintenance is peanuts.

If annual maintenance fee is paid, actual depreciation is basically cost to get those quirks fixed.

Unless you blow up engineering or you can't maintain hull integrity, there's no reason to scrap them, unless it's a tax write off.