This single page presents two accounts of the Polesotechnic League which maybe do not fit together too well.
(i) "Often having to serve as their own magistartes, legislators, naval commanders, and being in any case usually rambunctious, acquistive individualists, the great merchants of the League began more and more to live like ancient kings. Abuses grew ever more common: coercion, venality, reckless exploitation."
(ii) In the second account, there are big corporations:
the Home Companies (Global Cybernetis, Unity Communications, Terran Synthetics, Planetary Biologicals) are closely connected to the dominant trade unions (United, Technicians, Service Industries Workers, the Commonwealth Scientific Association) and, we already know, with the government of the Solar Commonwealth;
the Seven in Space (Galactic Developments, XT Systems, Interstellar Transport, Sanchez Engineering, Stellar Metals, Timebinders Insurance, Abdallah Enterprises) operate outside the Solar System;
the independents, like van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors, are unallied one-man or one-family fiefs - maybe this is where the "ancient kings" survive?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I'm sure many of the founders of the Home Companies or the Seven in Space were themselves much like Old Nick in being rambunctious. It was probably during the second or third generations, after going public (that is, selling stock and necessarily setting up Boards of Trustees. etc.) that we see them becoming the Home Companies or the Seven. Old Nick resisted having Solar Spice and Liquors going "public" precisely because it would inevitably severely reduce his actual control of the company.
Sean
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