The modern corporations of Paradi City are like the corporations of our world, only much larger and more fully autonomous. They are very nearly nations in themselves, with their own laws, cities, neighborhoods, factories, and armies. Most corporations are multinational; these branches may be as small as a research facility or sales office, or as large as a major manufacturing facility and security center.

There are two types of corporations; public and privately held. A public corporation can and does sell stock to the public. Privately held corporations are more like family businesses.

Most corporations are manufacturers – they produce some kind of commodity for sale on the open marker. Oil, steel, cars, aircraft, weapons, computers, cybernetics, biotechnologies; there are only a few of the millions of corporate operations. Many have several commodities in the market – they may control chemical plants Europe, computer factories in Japan, and steelmaking operations in the United States.

Mediacorporations

These huge conglomerates grew out of a trend in the late 2000’s, in which firms bought up TV networks, film companies, record companies, radio stations, and book, magazine, and even comic publishers; effectively centralizing the media under the control of a very few people.

Entertainment has become generic and bland. Print material has a “sameness” as a hundred magazines are produced by the same company. Dissenting opinions and independent productions are usually buried under an avalanche of media hype, or worse, co-opted or destroyed by the competitive practices of the major mediacorps. Still worse is the effect on news and information. Political candidates have realized that the right connections to the right mediacorp exec can win elections – only a short step to where the media corporations actually select, package, and sell their own candidates. While no major government is yet directly controlled by a mediacorporation, most socioanalysts predict it’s only a matter of time.

Agricorps

The Age of the Family Farm came to an end somewhere in the 2010’s. The United States had always been the world’s foremost producer of raw food stock. Coupled with the increasing need for grain and bulk crops to create alcohol fuels and organic plastics, agribusiness became one of the most powerful forces of the U.S.

Agricorps now control (directly or indirectly) nearly 65% of all the farmland in the United States; feeding roughly a third of the world’s population and supplying organic fuels and plastics to nearly two thirds. As the technological world underwent conversion from petroleum over to advanced forms of methanol, ethanol, and meta-alcohol, many of the leading oil producers bought up agricultural lands and shifted their refineries to organic fuel production. As a result, a list of most major agricorps reads like a Who’s Who of energy corporations.

Corporate Powerbroking

The modern corporation is usually organized as a vast hierarchy, with a President and Board of Directors at the top, and a huge sea of workers at the bottom. In the middle of this, one find the realm of the corporate executive, a struggling middle class overachiever, usually with the single-minded goal of grabbing as much power and privilege as possible. The average corporate begins as a junior executive, “bossing” a particular project or group of people. At the next level, he becomes a manager, controlling a specific department or production area. The major infighting begins here – only very successful Managers get elevated to the position of Assistant Vice President, where they control entire factories or other operations. They are, in turn, bossed by Vice Presidents, who control entire divisions of the company. Near the top is the Executive Vice President, who effectively runs the corporation. His boss is the President, who answers only to the Board of Directors and the Chairman of the Board.

Theoretically, corporate advancement is based on merit. In reality, the corporate world is rife with nepotism, deal making, brown nosing, cheating, lying, and credit stealing. Extortion, blackmail, and frame-ups are common.

One of the other factors in this web of corporate powerbroking is the role of organized crime. Realizing these new megacorps represented a new field of opportunity, the powerful families of the Mafia and other crime groups began to offer their services as bodyguards, hitmen, and general corporate enforcers. In some cases, the retainers remain faithful – at least to the people who pay the most. In other more unfortunate cases, the hired guns have taken direct control of the corporation themselves, leading to a new age of intercorporate infighting unchecked by even a sham of legality.

Employment Contracts

In the savage world of Big Business, it’s not unusual for an executive to jump from firm to firm, looking for big success. To prevent this, most Corporations require their employees to sign Employment Contracts, specifying how long they must work for the firm until they can quit. Contracts may run from a year for a low-level executive, to an entire lifetime for a key researcher or company president.

The penalties for breaking Employment Contracts are extremely severe; ranging from garnishment of wages, lawsuits, and loss of licenses. Corporations have been known to use sabotage software and deadly booby traps to ensure loyalty. Blackmail is common. Assassination and kidnapping are expected.

This makes Corporate “headhunting” a deadly game of cat and mouse. Most Corporations have their own “extraction teams” of independents, who, like KGB or CIA, arrange “defections” of key personnel from one side to the other. Headhunting can be especially lethal, as most corporations will use any and all means to stop a rival extraction team.

The Corporate City

In the 1960’s thru 70’s, social unrest and upheaval tore through Paradi City, leaving burned out tenements, deserted factories, and dying businesses in its wake. Most major corporations began moving their operations to safer locales and the entire project was in imminent risk of collapsing.

But as real estate prices began to rise, major companies began to reconsider their strategies. By the middle 1980’s, corporations working with the Paradi City government negotiated numerous tax incentives and prime real estate locations. They began to rehabilitate Middle and Upper Paradi. The corporations provided the money for new buildings, shopping malls, and model community areas, while the government provided tax incentives, inexpensive land, and police protection. By 1989, much of Upper Paradi had undergone this “gentrification” process.

The human cost of this restructuring was the displacement of the “undesirables” of the urban dead zones, primarily to Mid and Lower Paradi. Poor, drug dealers, pimps, gangs, and street people were all pushed out of the affluent city center, creating regions bounded on one side by affluent residential zones, and on the other by the now showcase Upper Paradi. This “doughnut” effect resulted in crime rates on both sides of the line beginning to skyrocket. Street gangs routinely uses the freight elevators and access tunnels to shuffle between layers, preying on new victims. This increase in crime led to the formation of a new branch of law enforcement, the Paradi Security Forces.

By the mid 80’s, corporations routinely hired guard patrols to supplement the already overloaded police force. These corporate police were well paid and had access to the best equipment available. As crime rates dropped, corporations found themselves being granted domains of their own within the city limits. The corporations were well equal to the task. They ruthlessly suppressed entire gangs and neighborhoods. Heavy weapon teams and armored vehicles would clear out blocks at a time. The bodies would be disposed of and legal staff would quietly arrange to cover the incidents over.