Megacorporations in Space

49 Comments

1. OH no. The O'Neill cylinder is the ultimate form of an HOA.

2. A favorite name of fictional corporation is Massive Dynamic.

3. I'm not sure if the problem is corporations, or consumer based capitalism. We need to organize if we're going to solve the big problems, no doubt, but if your business model is to keep selling upgraded versions of technology to people, how long before we're in some kind of comic book situation where every mad scientist in the city is making a death ray, or a suit of armor, or a jet pack, or all of the above? All I'm waiting for is someone to crack cold fusion and make a gigawatt arc reactor the size of a lunch box, and that's the first thing I'll try to do. I know Tony Stark had his in his chest, but let's be realistic. lol I think that, just like the technoilogy used in the moon landings in the 60s trickled down to the average person, eg: Tang, velcro, the tech we use to mine asteroids and send colony ships to alpha centuri and space habititats in the outter solar system and Mars, will trickle down too. We could find ourselves in a situation were everyone has access to potentially leathal technology. I wonder how future generations would deal with that?

4. Capitalists will never be able to colonize space. They've already hit the end of the road with financialization and would never invest the necessary money for long-term construction of infrastructure.

5. god please no corporations in space

6. Space-based megacorporations — it's a good thing that corporations always behave benevolently … hmmm …
   I'm sorry, but my records show that your family has already used up your monthly allotment of oxygen.

7. Once a corporation gets big enough to equal the economic output of one or more planets/habitats, it becomes rather trivial for them to choke out any smaller businesses and replace them with their own branches, until they pretty much own everything.

   A strong government can prevent that – but only as long as the population actually bothers holding them accountable to act in their best interest. And if the corp wants to play the long game, they can chip away at that by fostering political apathy/frustration via their media branches. Less political interest means politicians are at less risk of being discovered and ousted for engaging in corruption, which opens the doors for corporations to buy favors…

8. Boss makes a credit, I make an AI token that’s why I shit on the companies time

9. Once you got workers into space it would be pretty easy to just enslave them..like the chinese do to the fishermen on those boats that never come to port.

10. 01:21 what ship design

11. Remember, kids! Everything they say about Communism have been implemented under Capitalism, on a much greater scale in fact!

12. Love you but you're supposed to pronounce the P at the end of megacorp

13. 1001👍🏻

14. The one place not corrupted by capitalism! Tim Curry must be some kind of secret meme god.

15. I hate that Nebula doesn't allow comments

16. Interesting… One of my favorites on this subject is 'Roller Ball' with James Caan.

17. I bought & paid for Nebula so why can't I comment there. Please, don't let YouTube be the only place we can have conversations.
    Please, there are alot of things that would make engagement better on Nebula that y'all are not doing.

18. Dude you're a national treasure

19. I'm not a socialist or marxist or communist, but man, if we don't have a way of organising ourselves better than "market forces", then i don't think we should be allowed off this planet…

    I mean, i'm hearing a LOT of hedging about how a corporation "might" do this horrible thing, it "might" only charge you what's not fair for living conditions, it "might" not turn into some funky sci-fi Feudalism…

    Like, I don't mind reading it existing in Sci Fi as conflicts make for good stories, but even there they either turn the reality into a story plot point, or just outright ignore the reality of just how horrible unfettered capitalism was before regulation. We've lived in this "safe from the horrors of market economics" because we DO have regulatory bodies and governments who care, even if that "care" is token sometimes it isn't token all the time. We've lived in this state so long that we barely remember the stories around the industrial age before the World Wars… And that's ignoring the fact that we have tools now to create that kind of advancement in our economics and societies…

20. Hey man, the only way you can stay sane is by understanding.. You're wrong.

21. between now and then, a lot of people will die

22. That tie is out of this world sir. Great choice!

23. It's kinda weird to get multiple ads of yours on your video. Great as always though.

24. Welp they've done such a bang up job on Earth, what could go wrong in space? 🤔

25. In my fictional setting (Sol: Viral Load) the lore goes like this:

    (Skipping a lot of detail…)
    Luna is heavily industrialised, and is very corrupt.
    The Central space government finally gets the blueprints of very large space habitats. So everyone can stop fighting over land on Mars and instead just build land in space.

    Earth and corrupt groups on Luna attempt a coup on Luna, trying to take control of the shipyards. The Central government stops the coup, and then does a huge purge of all corruption on Luna. Including heavy restructuring of all industry and chain of command…. that's how the Megacorporations were born.

    The space government builds shipyards on various moons around Sol system. An attemp to limit future coup attempts. The Megacorporations politically capture Triton (moon of Neptune) and stop production of habitats. Instead it builds rouge shipyard kits.

    The Megacorporations are enacting a long-term plan where rogue shipyards in the TNO region will support habitats in the outer system. Those habitats will call for independence. That will act as a precedent for Megacorporations gaining full independence.

26. 15:00 to 16:00 are the greatest 1 minute of doeech I can recall hearing on YouTube or in life. Out to 16:20 rounds it out.

    I had to rewind that 3 or 4 times to internalize it.

    That's golden gold.

27. Worked for a resource megacorp, 12.5 hour days and great pay.

    Downsides are carcinogenic materials and chemicals and hours that probably shaved 10 years off my lifespan atleast.

    I personally enjoyed it, mostly.

28. I’d love to see how the right to leave works in space? Would all citizens have the right to an emergency evacuation? Which is complex even on earth?

29. Never owe your soul to the company store and never load 16 tons on a low gravity planet. 🤔

30. Which mega corp do you pledge your allegiance to and why?

31. hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

32. I just love how cheery and sarcastic Isaac was reading that our deaths from digestion by an alien organism are not covered under company policy. 😂😂

    A fantastic episode Isaac.

33. Precisely who is going to regulate these things? Just handwaving a "government" into existence is not an answer….

34. The thing about declaring that no single company can own everything (or every important thing) on a Moonbase or space-station is that the owners of the corporations often have more in common with each other than with their employees. Thus from the perspective of the average worker, there may be no difference between one megacorp owning everything, and a group of separate megacorps each owning bits of infrastructure.

35. Gekoloniseerd.

36. When it only takes 16 hours (approx.) for light to reach the heliopause, one could make a case for independence beyond the reach of Solar influence. A few days of distance can be contemplated, perhaps, but at weeks or months – to say nothing of years – who is going to hold anyone accountable. You will have either democracy or a totalitarian police state … or a society of robot drones lacking the intelligence to desire autonomy under the direction of a central hive mind.

37. We work for SuperMegaCorp, mining asteroid L3.
    I went to buy some food at the local SMC.
    The droid said they were out of stock, the next ship due in June.
    The man who was before me, had purchased the last prune.
    "What will we eat?" I asked. The droid, concerned about my plight,
    Removed one of its power packs and said "Here, take a bite."

38. I updated my dark fantasy Japan setting, to 600 years in the future as the Kaidan Star Empire. It's feudal Japan in space. My setting's megacorporations are Great Samurai Houses (since even today most Japanese corps were samurai houses in the feudal period, in fact you cannot be hired as an executive unless you are of samurai descent. That is encoded in my setting. So every Samurai House owns at least one corporation, has it's own house military. The Great Samurai Houses of the setting owns all the great corporations of the setting. Some house are far more powerful and wealthy than others, more closely meeting MegaCorp status.

39. We're already there….the Holiday Inn in space won't be on a government platform…they'll own the friggin' platform…with public money… 🤕

40. project morningstar does the best with the megacorporations, because they dominate the Hegamon but not control it.

41. 💝

42. Active suppression of alternatives. The Butlerian Jihad has entered the chat.
    I mean, seriously, the prequel books address this. Space folding by Guild ships is safer with the Guild Navigators, difficult but not impossible for regular humans, and not the only way to travel faster than light. Between the Guild and the Butlerians, Guild space folding is the only game in town because that's how they want it.

43. Corporations vs. governments. We have a lot of examples of rather nasty behavior from both, though I suppose only governments have literal megadeaths in their ledger (yet). We're still trying to balance them against each other, and in 300 years we'll still be trying to get it right.

44. A transport and communication company holding a monopoly and suppressing alternative tech …

    Hmm

    I would comment, but I don't want ComStar knocking my door in.

45. ……You are a Traveller and your fellow Travellers make up a part ownership in a Jump 2 Free Trader that has heavy repair High Port Fees, you enter have just a Bar looking for a Patron that has a job worth at least 150000 Credits ……no questions asked….. Roll 2D for IA Algorithm.

46. Something many people may have overlooked is that the most successful mega corporations in the near and distant future will not be owned and run by humans at all, but rather AI. This could well happen sooner than you think. Such corporations may already be publically well known as human run enterprises, but once the rains of power with respect to senior decision making are handed over, the AI could effectively take over, and do so in a way that is both ruthless and insidious. The most successful AI will outcompete all competition and one way or another eliminate all barriers to achieving it's goals. Shareholders will reap great dividends and initially propell the corporation forward. Over time those shares may get bought out by the AI itself using fabricated human proxies, until a point it has an effective majority share. At this point it can act however it wants to fulfill the goals it was originally programmed to achieve with absolute ruthlessness, and working on longer strategic timeframes than would satisfy the human requirement for a return in investments.

47. What determines the number of languages in YouTube's auto-dubbing? Can I hope my language will be added to this video? Or is there nothing I can do to fix it if it's already out? 🇬🇧

48. Nothing with a natural monopoly or inelastic demand should be for-profit. Too easy to exploit.

    Of course that doesn't solve the problem of an authoritarian gov't withholding that thing from the populace as a punishment; but it also doesn't have to be the gov't doing the not for-profit stuff. Corpos are capable of not being 100% greedy.

49. Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Building Better Worlds

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