Post by Legend on May 10, 2021 17:06:40 GMT
They went and did it, they destroyed it, those dirty apes....Well you've probably never seen that movie. In it the apes took over the Earth and the main character finds the statue of liberty destroyed, course you wouldn't know what the statue of liberty is either. What was my point? Right, change the Apes to Megacorps and you have the same movie, but with more pollution.
Can't say we didn't see it coming. Back when Earth had countries and governments, the corporations were getting larger and larger, and spending more and more on lobbying the politicians to pass bills that would benefit them. Eventually someone thought it would be a good idea to remove the antitrust laws. Those are the ones that kept companies from having monopolies on certain industries or branching out into unrelated fields. For instance, food companies couldn't decide they wanted to go open a hospital to treat all the people who got food positioning from their cheap burgers.
Of course the selling point was that we didn't need the extra regulation, companies had an interest in regulating themselves, and it would cut down on the already rampant overspending. Didn't take long to see how much of a joke that was. You don't drop a bunch of canaries into a house full of cats and expect the cats to not eat them. or is that a coalmine?
The first casualty was the fast food joints. Who knew only 10 companies owned all the fast food franchises between them. Well ten became five, and then things got bloody. Turns out the mafia and legitimate businesses are not that far apart when it comes to taking territory. Car bombs, assassinations, damn near outright warfare. Government tried to put the genie back in the bottle, but water don't flow uphill. Wasn't long before Amazon bought Google, then Netflix bought Amazon, Disney bought Netflix, Tricon Global bought Disney, and on and on it went until the corps controlled more than the actual Government. Power, Water, Food, Entertainment, Prisons, Police, even most of the damned military. You name it, the corps owned it, and wasn't a few years after that in the 2040s that they decided the Government wasn't needed either.
Don't know if your old enough to remember the riots and the militias tryin to fight back, but it was too little too late. Ya can't give up yer freedom and then try to win it back after the fact. Same with the Government. They tried to call up the military and the national guard, but over half were contractors and the ones that weren't, well they were using tanks and planes that had been made by the same corps they came to wrest control from. You can guess how that ended, just look around.
What came next was the breakup of the global superpowers into megacorp controlled fiefdoms, along with some areas that had managed to cling to independence. Greenland, Iceland, the UK, and Australia were able to hang onto their Independence, but without the ability to trade they all become third world countries within a few years.
For the rest of us, Corporate buyouts and hostile takeovers became common, with some devolving into full warfare. We all know the stories of how Aegis took Russia and California, or how Zandi dropped a bomb on what used to be known as Korea. Now it's just a radiation hazard. Course the dust did finally settle and now we have the Megacorps as we know them today. Our overlords and protectors. We live, work, and die by their decree. You want to eat? You want to earn a place to live? You work for them, and you've got little choice when it comes to what you want to do.
What about the people living in the shadows? Hah, they work for the corps too, but they like to fool themselves into thinking they have a choice. They buy steel and chrome from the very corps they say they are free from, and take on the jobs that those same corps want to keep off their books. They like to think they are some kind of freedom fighters, but let's be real, they are just another cog in the machine.
Which brings us to today. Were all born into servitude. We live and die in the same place unless we're lucky enough to be born with a silver spoon, or get a corporate sponsor that lets us move across territories. Let's face it though, most of us go to work, we make enough to live in a place with 10 other people, and survive on protein paste. Guess that's why so many people are applying to this Astreus project. An actual choice to be who you want to be? Well, long as you get selected. Got no hope here anymore, might as well try for a new life millions of light years away.
Can't say we didn't see it coming. Back when Earth had countries and governments, the corporations were getting larger and larger, and spending more and more on lobbying the politicians to pass bills that would benefit them. Eventually someone thought it would be a good idea to remove the antitrust laws. Those are the ones that kept companies from having monopolies on certain industries or branching out into unrelated fields. For instance, food companies couldn't decide they wanted to go open a hospital to treat all the people who got food positioning from their cheap burgers.
Of course the selling point was that we didn't need the extra regulation, companies had an interest in regulating themselves, and it would cut down on the already rampant overspending. Didn't take long to see how much of a joke that was. You don't drop a bunch of canaries into a house full of cats and expect the cats to not eat them. or is that a coalmine?
The first casualty was the fast food joints. Who knew only 10 companies owned all the fast food franchises between them. Well ten became five, and then things got bloody. Turns out the mafia and legitimate businesses are not that far apart when it comes to taking territory. Car bombs, assassinations, damn near outright warfare. Government tried to put the genie back in the bottle, but water don't flow uphill. Wasn't long before Amazon bought Google, then Netflix bought Amazon, Disney bought Netflix, Tricon Global bought Disney, and on and on it went until the corps controlled more than the actual Government. Power, Water, Food, Entertainment, Prisons, Police, even most of the damned military. You name it, the corps owned it, and wasn't a few years after that in the 2040s that they decided the Government wasn't needed either.
Don't know if your old enough to remember the riots and the militias tryin to fight back, but it was too little too late. Ya can't give up yer freedom and then try to win it back after the fact. Same with the Government. They tried to call up the military and the national guard, but over half were contractors and the ones that weren't, well they were using tanks and planes that had been made by the same corps they came to wrest control from. You can guess how that ended, just look around.
What came next was the breakup of the global superpowers into megacorp controlled fiefdoms, along with some areas that had managed to cling to independence. Greenland, Iceland, the UK, and Australia were able to hang onto their Independence, but without the ability to trade they all become third world countries within a few years.
For the rest of us, Corporate buyouts and hostile takeovers became common, with some devolving into full warfare. We all know the stories of how Aegis took Russia and California, or how Zandi dropped a bomb on what used to be known as Korea. Now it's just a radiation hazard. Course the dust did finally settle and now we have the Megacorps as we know them today. Our overlords and protectors. We live, work, and die by their decree. You want to eat? You want to earn a place to live? You work for them, and you've got little choice when it comes to what you want to do.
What about the people living in the shadows? Hah, they work for the corps too, but they like to fool themselves into thinking they have a choice. They buy steel and chrome from the very corps they say they are free from, and take on the jobs that those same corps want to keep off their books. They like to think they are some kind of freedom fighters, but let's be real, they are just another cog in the machine.
Which brings us to today. Were all born into servitude. We live and die in the same place unless we're lucky enough to be born with a silver spoon, or get a corporate sponsor that lets us move across territories. Let's face it though, most of us go to work, we make enough to live in a place with 10 other people, and survive on protein paste. Guess that's why so many people are applying to this Astreus project. An actual choice to be who you want to be? Well, long as you get selected. Got no hope here anymore, might as well try for a new life millions of light years away.