About Megacorporations...
One of my "suspension of disbelief" crashers in MegaTraveller
has been the concept that so little progress has been made in 3500 years.
(I can excuse the Vilani for not progressing much in 10,000 years; their
culture has been carefully defined as terminally stagnant.) I can only
push the belief in "Vilani-influenced research traditions" so far... that
doesn't explain why the Solomani Rim isn't TL20+ after 3500 years of
uninterrupted progress. (Go read the fine print about the Long Night;
the Old Earth Union was a "Safe Area" (HT definition) that wasn't affected
by the general economic and TL collapse...).
HOWEVER, something I just read provides a clue to 1100 years of
slow progress by the 3rd Imperium... and might explain the similar lack of
progress by the Solomani -- assuming they emphasize megacorporations to
the same extent as the Imperium! (We all know that the 3rd Imperium
coddles the megacorps at everyone else's expense...) From DDJ June'92,
p.55:
(discussing "cottage industry"-level innovators vs. large
companies) "... There's a self-limiting factor in that these
megacorporations quickly drive out the people who created the product.
[Several noted organizations] for example are slowly self-destructing
internally by driving out people who will not work in environments where
there are ten levels of managers above one."
(same article, later on) "...there are some developments that are
amenable to the anthill approach, and some that are not. There are
achievements that come about as a result of a breathtaking insight that
only comes from an individual..."
Emphasis being that breakthroughs are made by innovative
individuals, who rarely thrive in the megacorporate environment, but that
steady, evolutionary improvement is done quite well by large corporations.
Applying real world principles to the 3rd Imperium, where megacorporations
dominate business in the civilized Imperium, and have dominated it since
the rise of the Sylean Federation, I suggest the following:
Megacorporations almost never make breakthroughs. Breakthroughs are
made
by individuals in academic or very-small scale businesses. Megacorps
buy out breakthrough businesses, and then monopolize the techonological
breakthrough. They make incremental improvements to the breakthru tech,
but don't come up with innovative applications for the breakthru
technology. In places where the megacorp's regional managers have a
policy of squeezing small, locally competive businesses out of existance,
there are no breakthroughs for the big guys to parasitize. In places
where the megacorps have a policy of buying out innovators for cheap and
then selling the innovation for zillions of credits, would-be innovators
of that generation get the attitude, "why bother going to all that work
when someone is going to buy me out for small change?" Alternatively,
if a megacorp buys an innovator out for a good price, he/she/it may be
willing to work on more innovations, but may find that his main client,
the megacorp, has its own ideas on what he should work on, or what specs
his next project must meet for them to finance him, etc, etc...
Finally, the innovator can start his own company, either failing (a good
discouragement to other would-be innovators), or succeeding beyond his
wildest dreams, raking in gobs of money and becoming... a megacorp! This,
BTW, seems to be the genesis of several non-Vilani megacorps...
So, as long as the Imperium encourages the megacorps at the
expense of the small or individually-held business, technological progress
will be SL-O-O-O-W. However, items of the mainstream tech level should
be well-designed and have lots of consumer-oriented features. They should
be relatively standardized within a megacorp's product line. Where
there is competition between megacorps, prices should be reasonable,
and products *might* be standardized across megacorp lines. Where there
is NOT competition, prices will be "what the market will bear" or as
limited by law.
Alert readers will have thought of the obvious corollary: when
or where megacorp dominance fails, technological innovation should
increase -- but uniformity of technology may vary wildly. This suggests
that (a) areas bordering/beyond the Imperium NOT dominated by megacorps
and not so chaotic that would-be innovators are too busy trying to survive,
should be technologically advanced/advancing. E.g., stable Vargr worlds,
the Darrians, some select worlds. (Notice TL16 Kudzu [sic] in Gvurrdon).
And, (b) come Hard Times and the retreat of the Megacorps, worlds NOT
clobbered by HT should start picking up the pace of advancement...
resulting NOT in the desired mix of TL9-12 worlds, but a wild mix of
TL0-3 and TL15+ worlds in the long run...
So what was my point in all this? Oh, yes. It was that the
Megacorporate structure of business in the 3rd Imperium can account for
1100 years of glacially slow progress quite nicely. Now, can someone
explain why 1800 years of Long Night did not produce "a wild mix of
TL0-3 and TL15+ worlds", and why Hard Times should not??
(Arguments of "that's not in the spirit of classic Traveller" or
"it didn't because GDW says it didn't" are disallowed -- I want an
explanation that makes sense WITHIN the context of the 3rd Imperium
universe.)
- -- Via DLG Pro v0.991
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