A portal to Corporacratic America (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario we have a top secret DARPA project investigating some odd anomalies has yielded fruit, specifically wormholes linking parallel worlds. The gateway cost $35 billion dollars to built, weighs 4,200 tonnes, needs 50 megawatts of power to operate and takes about three hours to open up once the machine's going to open three meter wide portal to be opened up in a cave in the rocky mountains. Currently they have only been able to lock onto one alternate universe, which provides the template coordinates for other gateways. Explorers have been sent through to examine things. The world it has found is a parallel version of earth in which things have gone differently in the US.

The exact point of divergence is difficult to nail down, though it happened sometime in the late 19th century in the US. In short, there were a few incidents which derailed the introduction of labor laws in the United States. As such, corporations gradually got bigger and more influential with a few armed confrontations between various opposing groups between 1890 and 1923 lead to their consolidation of power. The end result of which was that the Gilded Age never ended and a shift of power away from the US Government and to the hands of eleven Prominent megacorporations. On paper the United States of America of this world is still the same USA that was created after the Revolutionary War. In practice the US government is in most sectors a marginalized body in the pocket of said megacorporations. It's not really oppressive and does not do much more than maintain the military (specifically the Navy, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Sky Force and Strategic Command), keep property records, run the courts, operate a few police forces that are mostly detective agencies and maintain a few highways and research labs. Local governments are similarly limited in most cases. Though at a Federal, State and Municipal level there are also powerful Consultation Boards (on paper just prominent lobby groups from the Megacorporations, in reality liaisons) and the elections are not exactly fair (more on this in a bit). To differentiate it from our world, we'll call this version of the US (which has annexed Mexico and Cuba) Corporacratic America.

In Corporacratic America the company town model has become ubiquitous. Towns, large sections of farmland and large areas of cities are owned by the megacorp with housing, accommodation, recreational facilities, schools and more based around factories, farms, office blocks and similar. For the most part to live in these areas you need to be an employee of said megacorp or at least be married to an employee. The wage of an average worker is about $7,500-15,000 USD and for the most part is paid in company scrip which can be redeemed at company shops, bars, cafeterias and so forth but can't officially be spent elsewhere. Scrip can be redeemed for dollars at a high (usually 5 to 1, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, a black market for scrip also exists). Only the top 7.5% of a companies employees (management and highly educated professionals like doctors and engineers as well as celebrities and other prominant individuals) get paid in dollars and enjoys a considerably better standard of living. Where your average worker lives in a barracks, 20-40 square meter apartments or similarly small modular homes and often rarely leaves the compound, senior employees have spacious flats or houses in suburbs along with cars, travel, domestic servants and similar privileges. Your standard worker can work 10-12 hours a day for twelve days a week. Many of them are indentured to the company. Education is part of this as for most employees education in a company school is their only option and for the most part enrollment means paying off your school fees after graduation. Only the children of senior employees and the top 10-15% of non senior employee children get education provided for gratis and most children begin work at age 12. About eighty percent of the 500 million people of Corporocratic America lives in such systems.

Each of the Eleven Megacorporations has it's own security force which serve as police, repo-men, evictors, union busters and similar. The populations of Compounds are tightly monitored with CCTV everywhere and communications monitored. Corporate Loyalty is incentivized as is general support for Corporate Rule in general. Say the wrong thing one too many times and you're fired. Similarly music, television, movies, video games and so forth are made to instill loyalty. Employees are required to vote for the candidate the corporation tells them to vote for.

In addition, there are also some areas beyond the company towns and districts. Some of these are the previous mentioned managerial neighborhoods manors for the ruling share-holders (the top 0.1% of Corporacratic American society). Others are high end commercial and entertainment districts where dollars move. There are still a few small businesses and middling companies which get by in the cracks or exist in small niches. There are also The Dregs, slum districts deliberately set aside as places in which those which don't conform to the rules of Corporacratic society are dumped. Life in a Corporate Compound is regimented, involves a lot of hard work and is far from luxurious, but the apartments are clean, there's food on the plate and things are mostly safe. The Dregs are full of crappy buildings thrown up out of whatever can be scrounged up thrown up without any plan full over abject poverty, decay and crime. People who get Fired usually end up in The Dregs and people born into the Dregs are often more than happy to escape to a comfy Corporate District where even in the barracks you don't have to choose for two out of three on running water, electricity and heating (if that). Corporate Security largely leaves these slums to their own insidious devices (besides the occasional punitive mission if they threaten Megacorp assets) and the areas where the gangs run protection rackets are the nicer parts of the Dregs. A lot of people who die on the streets in The Dregs every year, which is part of their function.

Pollution is pretty bad, at best there are a few token efforts to minimizing it. American Religion has been altered by the Corporacracy to suit it's needs. Sermons often speak of the need for unchained capitalism. On the positive side there has been a push against sexism, overt racism and more recently homophobia. The biggest rivals of Corporacratic America is the British led Imperial Federation, the Empire of Japan and the France led United Republics of Europe. Corporacratic America largely stays out of foreign military entanglements (America was directly involved in this world's first world war, but not the second which was Britain, France Japan against basically Fascist Tsarist Russia) in the Old World, but does maintain along the Canadian Border and has it's hands in the politics of other nations funding pro hyper capitalists and it does get involved in conflicts in South America. It's biggest internal opponent is the American Communard Front.

Technologically, Corporacratic America is mostly on par with the US in many fields and there is some concern that within the next decade they might be able to build their own portal generators and due to complicated physics, the most likely world that they could establish a link to would be ours. On the flipside, the modern US could easily build numerous portal generators that would cost only $15 billion to build, mass half as much using 15% less energy than the prototype. They also have plans for 200 tonne sustainer module that could be set up on the other side. It would require a megawatt to operate, but would further half the energy cost to keep a wormhole open.

What would you say would be the appropriate response for the United States in regard to Corporacratic America?

Zor

[Broomstick]

Don't let Republicans or Libertarians see it, they might get ideas....

[Raw Shark]

Your standard worker can work 10-12 hours a day for twelve days a week.

So, the standard day is 14 hours long here?

[Zor]

Your standard worker can work 10-12 hours a day for twelve days a week.

So, the standard day is 14 hours long here?

Mix up, that should be six days a week.

Zor

[Starglider]

Unclear how this country got to a population of 500M with even more pressure to have both parents working and much higher costs of education/childcare than the real US. Has all abortion been banned for reducing worker counts? Much more immigration than in reality?

[Solauren]

The best course of action, I.M.H.O (based on what we know is) -

Widescale espionage efforts on the Megacorporations to prevent them from developing portal tech, followed by widescape efforts to cause the Megacorporations to collapse.

Yes, absolutely shitty thing to do as far as the population of that 'alternate world' is concerned, but do we really want what is essentially a slave-run super power looking at our world? We have enough problems with our own industrial complex, without this one coming along to try to convert ours.

[Broomstick]

Unclear how this country got to a population of 500M with even more pressure to have both parents working and much higher costs of education/childcare than the real US. Has all abortion been banned for reducing worker counts? Much more immigration than in reality?

Probably a ban on abortion except to save the life of the mother or similar reasons. Possibly also banning of most or all birth control. Women probably get their "careers" interrupted during reproductive years fairly frequently. Perhaps mega-corp sponsored day care (which probably seamlessly turns into whatever corporate-required education for young children exists) for toddlers and up which, done on a large scale, is probably affordable once you balance out costs of that against the profits from putting the adult women back to work.

The alternative is "screw the peons, they're replaceable" but that depends on an influx of workers from elsewhere which, given how thoroughly the megacorps have taken over, might no longer be practical.

[Solauren]

Wouldn't surprise me if women had to have as many children as possible as part of their 'employment'. "Jack married Jill? Jill, you have to put out an average of 1 child every 18 months now. That's your job. Don't worry, the company provides full day care and education".

Essentially, turning the population into a willing breeding 'we're not slaves' population.

[Broomstick]

Um.... human reproduction doesn't work like that. You can't do it on an automation level. Some women can churn out one kid a year (Duggers, I'm looking at you) and other women are infertile. Attempts to impose quotas like that will always fail.

Just eliminate birth control, legal abortion, and reduce the number of fun activities that the average peon can afford and you'll wind up with lots of kids underfoot. Provide adequate (not luxurious, just adequate) food and medical care (emphasis on vaccinations so you don't wind up with epidemics) and you'll have enough of those kids survive to long enough to become profitable serfs.

[Solauren]

Um.... human reproduction doesn't work like that. You can't do it on an automation level. Some women can churn out one kid a year (Duggers, I'm looking at you) and other women are infertile. Attempts to impose quotas like that will always fail.

Just eliminate birth control, legal abortion, and reduce the number of fun activities that the average peon can afford and you'll wind up with lots of kids underfoot. Provide adequate (not luxurious, just adequate) food and medical care (emphasis on vaccinations so you don't wind up with epidemics) and you'll have enough of those kids survive to long enough to become profitable serfs.

Two Words: Fertility Treatments

Also, you could easily make fertility testing a condition of 'employment', and anyone found to be infertile, you arrange so they can only marry another infertile individual. That way, you don't waste half a potential breeding pair.

Basically, when it comes to reproduction, instead of treating people like people, treat them like animals you're trying to breed for profit.

[Batman]

Or they could just kill off the infertile ones to begin with? I mean this doesn't look like a setup overly concerned with things like human rights

[Ralin]

Seems like it would be simpler to just give hiring/promotion/benefits priority to people with kids and let nature take its course.

[Solauren]

Or they could just kill off the infertile ones to begin with? I mean this doesn't look like a setup overly concerned with things like human rights

Depends.

Infertile people will need less time off for raising their own children, so they could be used in roles caring for children.
Especially if they can identify that while a child is still young (say early teens), and then move them into an educational path that would make them suitable as a teacher.

Seems like it would be simpler to just give hiring/promotion/benefits priority to people with kids and let nature take its course.

How about this then?
Minimum of 2 required kids (fertility treatments are free), and incentives to have more (i.e +5% on wages, and all food is covered, per kids).

Combine that with a lack of contraceptives, and you'll have pretty solid growth.

[Broomstick]

Um.... human reproduction doesn't work like that. You can't do it on an automation level. Some women can churn out one kid a year (Duggers, I'm looking at you) and other women are infertile. Attempts to impose quotas like that will always fail.

Just eliminate birth control, legal abortion, and reduce the number of fun activities that the average peon can afford and you'll wind up with lots of kids underfoot. Provide adequate (not luxurious, just adequate) food and medical care (emphasis on vaccinations so you don't wind up with epidemics) and you'll have enough of those kids survive to long enough to become profitable serfs.

Two Words: Fertility Treatments

More words: expense, requires time and trained personnel to administer, and increases the rate of twins and other multiples which result in more expensive, high-risk pregnancies and expensive, and premature infants which are also expensive.

The elite part of society might have access to that, but would it be cost-effective to offer it to the peons?

Also, you could easily make fertility testing a condition of 'employment', and anyone found to be infertile, you arrange so they can only marry another infertile individual. That way, you don't waste half a potential breeding pair.

Yeah, that might be something they do. Or if a man is infertile use sperm donation for the woman in the partnership (clearly, they'd only allow heterosexual marriage because making more workers is a priority).

I could see utilizing genetic testing/family history to decrease the chance of birth defects as well.

Or they could just kill off the infertile ones to begin with? I mean this doesn't look like a setup overly concerned with things like human rights

What, and waste an able-bodied worker? Absolutely not! Use infertile workers for jobs that pose a risk to reproductive health so you don't injure the fertile peons.

How about this then?
Minimum of 2 required kids (fertility treatments are free), and incentives to have more (i.e +5% on wages, and all food is covered, per kids).

Even with fertility treatment you can't guarantee 2 kids a couple. If someone can't produce children insisting they do is like asking someone with no legs to tap dance. Just not gonna happen. In our world only about 1/3 of people undergoing fertility treatment ever wind up with a baby, and there's significant expense attached to many of the treatments. The only cheap method is sperm donation to get around an infertile man, which they might make use of, but all the hormonal treatments for women I think might not be cost-effective from their viewpoint.

Incentivizing having more kids could work - up to a point. You actually don't want a woman churning out one kid a year because that will have bad effects on the woman's health and can shorten her life. Then you wind up with a bunch of motherless kids someone has to look after while dad is at work, which apparently he will be most of his waking hours.

Another thing you could do is, when you do have infertile couples, give them incentives to adopt children without parents (or those removed from abusive parents - don't want people killing/crippling future workers!). Which solves the problem of what to do with such children. That's the only situation where mandating a minimum of two kids would work - if you can't conceive or carry a baby to term then you adopt.

Combine that with a lack of contraceptives, and you'll have pretty solid growth.

Forget the fertility treatments - too expensive (aside from sperm donation). Just eliminate contraception. Combine that with decent public health measures and preventive methods like vaccination to keep infant/child mortality down and the population will explode. That's basically what happened in our world in the 20th Century and why we went from about 1.5 billion people in 1900 to around 7 billion in 2000 despite birth control becoming widespread mid-century. Oh, and don't educate the women too much - highly educated women tend to have fewer kids. Around 1950, before hormonal birth control, the average woman had 5 kids which is very comfortably over replacement rate. That's why I keep saying if you ban birth control you'll have plenty of new people, use basic public health measures to ensure infant/child mortality remains low, and there you go - plenty of new workers. For cheap.

Of course, if you get into a situation where you have more workers than you need you can start administering mandatory birth control and space out women's pregnancies, or saying they can only have 3 (or whatever number). After all, there's no point to breeding workers you don't need, they just cost money to house and feed.

Which brings up some bleak prospects for those too old or disabled to work....

[Ralin]

How about this then?
Minimum of 2 required kids (fertility treatments are free), and incentives to have more (i.e +5% on wages, and all food is covered, per kids).

Combine that with a lack of contraceptives, and you'll have pretty solid growth.

Simpler to just make it known that employees without kids aren't seen as reliable or mature enough for promotion and that parents get preferential treatment for things like scheduling. Plus all that stuff Broomstick said.

[Solauren]

For everyone going 'Fertility treatments are expensive'.

You're thinking 'real world USA' where alot of medical stuff is massively over priced. US medicine is 'for profit'. US fertility treatment is probably one of the worse. Just google "How profitable are fertility treatments in the United States".

(Cancer treatment is probably the worse. Just ask Walter White....)

When my wife and I did fertility treatments, it was covered by our provincial health plan. Same with my sister, and with several people I know.
(According to my sister, she was discussing it on online with someone, and the American in the conversation were all shocked by the idea of it being covered.). Even some cost of invetro are covered, if the 'basic drug route' doesn't work. Guess what? The basic fertility drug route works way more then US fertility clinics say it does. (Alot of them just for right for expensive Invetro treatments).

So, if you remove the 'for profit' aspects of medical care, and look at it from long term profit point of view, fertility treatments make sense.
$5000 in fertility treatments creates a new worker, that you can get $500,000 of labor out of. That's cheaper then new cars here in the real world. Hell, that's cheaper then some second hand cars I've seen for sale. And it's a 1:100 profit margin.

And like a corporation would care if they 'burn out' a womans ability to reproduce or work. She can stay home and look after the new future production workers she has birthed, and other peoples future production workers, like a good little wage slave.

(You all are not thinking Evil enough).

[Broomstick]

For everyone going 'Fertility treatments are expensive'.

You're thinking 'real world USA' where alot of medical stuff is massively over priced. US medicine is 'for profit'. US fertility treatment is probably one of the worse. Just google "How profitable are fertility treatments in the United States".

(Cancer treatment is probably the worse. Just ask Walter White....)

When my wife and I did fertility treatments, it was covered by our provincial health plan. Same with my sister, and with several people I know.
(According to my sister, she was discussing it on online with someone, and the American in the conversation were all shocked by the idea of it being covered.). Even some cost of invetro are covered, if the 'basic drug route' doesn't work. Guess what? The basic fertility drug route works way more then US fertility clinics say it does. (Alot of them just for right for expensive Invetro treatments).

Actually, in some US states fertility treatments ARE covered. 16 of them, in fact: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and West Virginia. Which is a bizarre mix of far-left (by US standards), far-right, and in the middle states. So the shock of them being covered will vary depending on which state your US conversation partner is living at the time.

And even in the less expensive UHC nations fertility treatments still have a cost. If you're going for Evil Corporate Overlords why spend anything at all when you can just compel the infertile to adopt the orphaned/abandoned/removed children? That's even cheaper. Cheaper than fertility treatments and cheaper than setting up professional caretakers in an orphanage. Better results than an institutional orphanage as well, kids do better in a family setting, that's been demonstrated over and over in the real world.

Or, like I said, if the average fertile woman is churning out 5 kids apiece then just use the infertile for jobs that negatively impact fertility, like lead smelters or nuclear industries involving radiation exposure. That way you don't risk future problems in future workers and still get useful labor out of the infertile.

$5000 in fertility treatments creates a new worker, that you can get $500,000 of labor out of.

No. $5000 in fertility treatments creates a BABY. It's going to cost a lot more than that to feed, clothe, house, and minimally educate the kid until he or she can actually go to work and start producing profitable labor. What is the cost of raising a peon in this system until the kid is old enough to go work in a factory or whatever?

And like a corporation would care if they 'burn out' a womans ability to reproduce or work. She can stay home and look after the new future production workers she has birthed, and other peoples future production workers, like a good little wage slave.

No, she can't if she's dead from pregnancy/childbirth complications.

If you're insisting women breast feed (and why not? It's cheaper than formula) then forcing her to maintain a pregnancy AND breastfeed either simultaneously or too often too close together will, as I said, degrade her health which will degrade the health of her children as well - underweight, premature and expensive babies, nutritionally deficient infants and toddlers that may suffer various health problems.... That's not good animal husbandry. There's a reason that, say, dairy cows are "dried off" before being impregnated and starting a new calf.

Assuming "old enough to get pregnant" at 15 and menopause at 50, having a baby every 3 years works out to 11 children for a woman. That is plenty, and more than enough to compensate for anyone infertile. It also allows a woman to birth, breastfeed, and wean a child before starting the next which is what we've evolved for.

Sure, you could have a completely evil, Orwellian type civilization that absolutely grinds people underfoot but hey, enjoy the inevitable rebellions and riots, or a system that provides some level of comfort for the peons so they are less likely to revolt.

Probably, you'll have some variance in how corporations treat their workers, with some better than others in various respects. Maybe one allows more recreational pharmaceuticals. Maybe another allots slightly larger living space to peons. If you design the system with the physical health and psychology of the animal involved you'll get better health and better results. After all, you're not raising these people to, say, age 25 then summarily killing them off, you're looking to get maximum labor for the maximum amount of time from them in a cost-effective manner. Kids born underweight and staying there, or fucked up from nutritional deficiencies, are not good workers. People who are mentally ill from poor upbringing aren't good workers, either.

What you want is a system where the peons have SOME small comforts and luxuries to keep them pacified, and a system that emphasizes maximizing health and preventing problems because that's going to be cheaper in the long run.

[Solauren]

$5000 creates a new worker
It's up to the parents to pay for the upkeep until it starts working. (Education not withstanding)

[Zor]

Unclear how this country got to a population of 500M with even more pressure to have both parents working and much higher costs of education/childcare than the real US. Has all abortion been banned for reducing worker counts? Much more immigration than in reality?

Incentives. There are special bonuses, promotion prospects and old age securities to married couples which produce three or more children, child no. 4 gets their education half off, child no. 5 and above gets their education gratis (this also means that younger/youngest children get over represented in lower management and higher education in Corporacratic society) Compounds do have daycare services for infants and toddlers. Besides the cost of education in a Corporate Compound does not fall on the parent, it falls on The Child who goes into debt. Total birthrates are still lower than they were in the Industrial Revolution (and yes, both men and women worked a lot then), but they can produce more people than is required to replace the dead.

Zor

[Broomstick]

$5000 creates a new worker
It's up to the parents to pay for the upkeep until it starts working. (Education not withstanding)

That disincentives having more children - sure, they might keep popping them out if there's no birth control but at least some folks will discover how to pleasure each other while reducing the odds of conception. And starving children make poor adult workers.

It's like saying "well, I've got this herd of cattle and I make sure the cows get pregnant every year but it's up to the cow to provide feed to her offspring after weaning, I'm not going to pay for it." The only people who had slaves and didn't feed them were the Nazis - and that's because they weren't interested in having another generation of those people.

The peons might not have a lavish lifestyle but they'll need the means to maintain a certain base level of life quality or else you'll wind up with more problems than you solve.

Assuming rational management - but in this sort of scenario poorly managed populations are not going to do well in comparison to populations that are well managed.

[Solauren]

Valid points.

So, perhaps the Evil Corporate Overlords limit the use of reproduction technology to
#1 - Those that can't have children otherwise, but want them.
#2 - Those that meet certain requirements (i.e High Intelligence).

They have to be doing something beyond 'no birth control' to have a population that is 150% the size of 'real world' United States, however.
(The population of the US is approximately 330 million people, vs the 500 million for Corporacratic America).

I'd like to see the age distribution for Corporacratic America. It actually might be worse if they literally work people to death in their 60s

[Broomstick]

Valid points.

So, perhaps the Evil Corporate Overlords limit the use of reproduction technology to
#1 - Those that can't have children otherwise, but want them.
#2 - Those that meet certain requirements (i.e High Intelligence).

That would make sense.

They have to be doing something beyond 'no birth control' to have a population that is 150% the size of 'real world' United States, however.
(The population of the US is approximately 330 million people, vs the 500 million for Corporacratic America).

Not a whole lot more. As I mentioned, the average woman in 1950 had 5 children. From 1950 to 2020 that's ample time to grow a population. As opposed to our world America, which for most of the past 70 years has been reproducing at or just barely above replacement rate (most of our population growth has been immigration).

Combine that with post-WWII public health and medicine to drive down child mortality and it shouldn't be a problem. I very much doubt they're going to allow exemptions to, say, mandatory vaccination outside of actual medical reasons. Reduce the availability of personal convenience like individual/family owned trucks (outside of the very, very wealthy) and people will be forced to walk more, limit availability of junk food in the company stores and you'll avoid a lot of the obesity illnesses we suffer from. Promote local-level sports teams, put in some biking/walking trails, and other relatively low-cost things to encourage the peons to exercise.

They might be more sloppy with chemical and toxic exposures which might lead to a higher cancer rate, but they might not spend so much money on trying to cure that so much as shuffling workers off to hospice and giving them pain medication.

I'd like to see the age distribution for Corporacratic America. It actually might be worse if they literally work people to death in their 60s

They might also have higher rates of industrial accidents and disease.

[Solauren]

Disease yes. Absolutely

Industrial accidents? Probably less so.

Why?

Those cost money, and time. Therefore, they lower profits.

Keep the workers safe, and accident don't occur that affect profits.

[Bedlam]

I'm not so sure of those in charge would be quite so logical over the long term. Pure capitalism tends to favor the short term profit over long term things don't tend to be looked at much further than the next quarterly or yearly report.

I'm not sure to what extent management is going to take the maths that it's worth paying x now to increase the work forces life expectancy by 5 years because it means they'll earn you 2x in 50 years time. To them it's going to be more important that you have that x profit now!

The same with industrial accidents and the like, sure you want things safe enough so that you'll not going to need to rebuild a factory or train a large number of staff this year or next year, but if you're going to need to spend lots more now to have things still working well in 5 or 10 years well that's probably going to be someone else's problem.

However, the setting provided at the beginning probably differs fairly significantly from 'pure' capitalism if the ruling class is more or less static within each company and tend to be both managers and owners then it might start working more like a feudal or even strangely semi communist when the rulers might think more or long term issues as they intend to pass the company on to their children.

[Solauren]

One also has to wonder what their recycling technology is like.

While I doubt it's in widescale use (Apartment buildings are more cost efficient, so you have more room for garbage dumps vs real world american suburban spawl), but I can see these Megacorporations working on getting it more 'cost neutral/profitable', so they can recycle their own garbage cheaply, instead of letting it sit there not doing anything.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was more advanced then ours (perhaps at the point of breaking down unrecycleable alloys into forms that can be recycled).

Especially if one of them figured out 'if I can figure out how to recycle all garbage, and keep that tech to myself, the other Megacorps will either end up drowning in their own garbage, or pay me to take their trash, and then I can see the new materials back to them'.