Think if Apple, Pfizer, McDonalds, Siemens, Wal-mart, Chiquita and their ilk ruled the world. Okay, I've had an idea for a setting for a while now, but haven't really been able to get very far with it.įantasy medieval or renaissance era type time period, but kingdoms are replaced global corporations. This doesn't mean it won't have its dynastic families, or its class divides it just won't glorify the aristocracy in the same way. Such a corporation will have a strong ethic of anti-monarchism. If your country had a bad run of tyrants, the corporation might well have formed to oppose them. That fear was so strong that, centuries later, politicians assassinated Julius Caesar and claimed justification by saying that he was probably going to be king soon. They set up the Republic for many reasons, but a big one was the fact that they were adamant: no more kings. Rome started off with kings, and the Romans hated them. You might also see a reaction similar to that of the Roman Republic. If it's in their best interests to incorporate, say to purchase the services of mercenaries for defence or to undertake expensive public works like aqueducts or the construction of walls or cathedrals, they'll be first in line. They're full of traders and highly specialised craftsmen. ![]() City-dwellers are historically a bad fit for class societies, and they usually operate under special arrangements with the powers that be. Why form a collective, rather than a feudal arrangement with lords and social classes? Well, the most obvious answer is the city. The signatories of the charter have something to gain from it, which accounts for its initial legitimacy: everybody wants a piece of the pie. In this case, perhaps the charters are collective agreements rather than royal letters of marque. People will routinely sign contracts and keep detailed accounts of transactions, and any form of organised activity is done under a charter or license. I think any truly corporate state will have fairly advanced legal practice, at least on the equivalent of medieval England. It doesn't mean I was in the same hemisphere as Queen Elizabeth, let alone taking her coin, but the Crown is something different. I've worked for the Crown - carrying boxes. You just need the legal theory to describe what the corporation is, and some framework to describe why everybody should approve of its legitimacy.Īnother example is the Crown, which anyone in the Commonwealth Realms will recognise. You could easily have corporations that operate without the sanction of any nation-state configuration of government. It's a convenient fiction that smooths over issues of ownership, responsibility, and collective action. I was looking into the history of corporations the other day, and was interested to note that the Roman Empire itself was considered a kind of corporation per the legal theory of the day!Ī corporation is simply an organisation that has the nominal rights and abilities of a person (hence the name: it's an embodiment). I do like how challenging your idea is.Įdit: You also might get some inspiration from books like "Aurora's Whole Realm Catalogue" if you can find it or the Forgotten Realms Almanac. Lawyers could almost be a new breed of wizard and villain. If you included Airships or similar vehicles then you could have a "modern medieval" world (and this might be less slapstick). ![]() ![]() Such a magical device would change the face of the world and then mass production would be invented. How do you introduce Mass Production into a fantasy genre? Perhaps an artifact was discovered/created that could evaluate an object and magically reproduce the object as long as materials are available. Corporations became Mega-Corporations because of mass production.What are the main consumer needs in a medieval society? You could have Best Value Inns that are actually Inns (a little slapstick), Rent-A-Goblin (I actually used Rent-A-Kobold in a less serious D&D game once), Talhov's Tankards?.Unless it is very much in the background, it is hard to view this with seriousness for a few reasons: Unfortuantely, I don't see this happening in a fantasy setting without it being very tongue n cheek unless it is a modern fantasy setting like Shadowrun or Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality (Where they even have different models of flying carpets). I agree, especially in fiction, as exemplified by any number of cyberpunk novels where government is replaced by mega-corporate states.
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