A Brief History of San DoradoCoyote wrote: Stock Nation: Post Count = GDP, in millions.
17% Military Professionalism
27% Industrial Capacity
25% Population
6% Land Area
25% Science and Education
The city of San Dorado was founded in 1819 as a trading post by the famous trader-explorer Sir Siegfried Schrom in the name of the Shroomanian Settlement Syndicate. The Syndicate was an early joint-stock company that had a monopoly on all Shroomanian colonial trade and virtually ruled the Shroomanian colonies. Under its rule San Dorado rapidly grew in size and influence, until it was one of the most important commercial and military centers of the Shroomanian Empire. It was a bustling trading port, a military fort and a place to dump the Empire's criminals, all rolled into one. Suffice it to say, San Dorado was a rather chaotic place from the get-go.
Throughout the first half of the 19th century the city continued to grow, becoming more and more of a self-sufficient entity and less and less of a dependent colony. After the revolution that swept through the Empire in 1861, the Shroomanian colonial empire saw a far-reaching reorganization. San Dorado first became a self-governing state within the Shroomanian Empire, and then declared independence from the empire unilaterally in August 1901.
The city-state's independence changed little in the grand scheme of things however: Shroomania remained one of San Dorado's most important trading partners, the city remained a tumultuous place, and the specter of aggressive capitalism still haunts the streets. "The business of San Dorado is business", the immortal words spoken by Sir Schrom, the founder and first governor of the city, remain the city's official motto to this very day.
Political system
San Dorado is not a democracy, but a corporate state of which every citizen is a shareholder. That is to say, every citizen holds at least one share of San Dorado stock. At birth, a citizen must receive at least one share from either parent. If the parents have only one share each, then the child is awarded one share from the reserves. Citizens can buy or can be awarded many more shares as bonuses and dividends. They are free to sell their shares to any other citizen or back to the corporation as they please. They may not sell their shares outside the corporation without special permission. This permission is never given.
Among other things, every share entitles the citizen to one vote in San Dorado's many elections and referendums. Since it is obviously impractical for every citizen to vote on every issue, the citizens elect representatives to speak for them on the Board of Directors. This is done every four years.
In the corporate state there are far more shares than there are voters, and individual citizens are free to sell all but one of their shares. (They are actually free to sell that last share too, but if they do they cease to be citizens.) Because shares can be bought and sold freely this means that political influence is not evenly distributed. Indeed there are electoral districts where 90% of the votes are controlled by a single individual or group of individuals.
Although officially only citizens are employed by San Dorado's industries, the fact of the matter is that there are teeming masses of illegal immigrants and other non-citizens employed in the city-state. These people form an underclass whose cheap labour profits the corporate state immensely. They are essentially unrepresented and unprotected, and typically toil in sweatshops or on the mechanized farms and mines that provide the cities with the natural resources it needs. In theory they can, through various bureaucratic processes, eventually gain permission to buy San Dorado shares (thus becoming citizen-shareholder), but in practice this remains an unattainable dream for most.
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- PeZook
