Privately-Owned Society: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
In [[The Future]], [[Alternate History]] or simply somewhere apart from historical location, there exists a society where virtually everything is privately owned. From [[Law Enforcement, Inc.|the police]] to the fire department to the national park service, sometimes even to the military and courts, nearly everything is privately owned in this society. Depending on the views of the author on capitalism, this may be presented in a variety of lights, most often an [[
A common trope in [[Cyberpunk]] fiction in general, given all the [[Mega Corp
[[One Nation Under Copyright]] is a subtrope. May be a [[NGO Superpower]].
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]]
* ''[[Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky|Riki-Oh]]'' is all about this and why it's a bad idea. In the post-apocalyptic setting, all formerly government run programs from schools to prisons are privately owned. A dystopic example, as corruption and human rights violation abounds. Though considering, the [[Crapsack World]] they live in, they probably had no other choice, what with lack of funding due to ''[[
== [[Film]] ==▼
* As mentioned above, ''[[Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky]]''.▼
▲== Film ==
▲* As mentioned above, ''[[The Story of Ricky]]''.
* The town of Harrington in ''Polly'' is pretty much entirely run by the title character's aunt. She even controls the preacher's sermons.
* It's flat-out stated that Omni Consumer Products owns and operates the police department in ''[[
** The plot of the second film revolves around OCP coming to the mayor to collect on a loan. Apparently, if the mayor doesn't pay up, the city of Detroit officially belongs to the company. While the mayor tries to appeal to the citizens, claiming that democracy will be gone, the chairman retorts that each citizen of the new Delta City will become an OCP shareholder and thus have a voice in the company.
** The third film has OCP try to take over the city by force, firing the police and bringing its own private security force.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* The Satellite in ''[[
* Some of L. Neil Smith's novels, particularily ''The Probability Broach''.
* [[Neal Stephenson]]'s ''[[Snow Crash]]''. The American federal government has ceded most of its power to private businesses. Taken to its logical conclusion: gated communities are now FRANCHISED sovereign nations.
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* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] was fond of this trope:
** In ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]'', the moon is a penal colony, so the government has no interest in providing any services. Education involves the parents (if any) paying someone to tutor their child. Insurance of any kind is generally handled by bookies. There is very little law enforcement; generally crimes are handled by people just deciding to punish someone.
** The sequel, ''[[
* In ''[[
* In the [[Vorkosigan Saga]], Jackson's Whole is like this. It's ''loathsome''.
* [[The Space Merchants]] ''is'' this.
* ''[[Rats, Bats, and Vats
* In Michael Z. Williamson's ''Freehold'' and its sequels, the title ''Freehold of Grainne'' is this all over. It avoids being either U- or Dys-topia. Unless you ask happy Citizen [[Unreliable Narrator|Mark Ballanger]], but he ''knows'' he's partial.
* [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[The Golden Oecumene
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* This is the case in ''[[Cosmopol]]'', which is an [[
* This runs rampant in ''[[Shadowrun]]'', which is no surprise, given its cyberpunk background. Most metropolitan police services were replaced in the 2020s by a private contractor called Lone Star after nation-wide police strikes, and most emergency medical care is run by a private firm called DocWagon (most runners have a contract with them).
** This is even more true of the Pueblo nation, which actually ''is'' a corporation jointly owned by its citizens.
* In [[Traveller]] there are whole planets owned by Megacorporations or Imperial Nobles. While strictly speaking mistreating residents is looked on disfavourably by the Imperium (and extreme versions of such can get a visit by the Imperial Marines), it is possible to conceal something atrocious on such places should the owner be inclined.
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
▲== Video Games ==
* ''[[Second Life]]'' could be viewed as a virtual version of this trope.
* Andrew Ryan's underwater Objectivist project called "Rapture" in ''[[
* The [http://galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Dominion_of_Korx Korx] of ''[[Galactic Civilizations]]''.
* The Caldari State, one of the four playable races in [[
* Illium in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' is a prosperous asari colony built purely on the principle of laissez-faire, where practically everything is owned by private corporations, and almost anything is legal as long as it's done under contract - dangerous drugs are OK as long as the label mentions their lethal side-effects and slavery is legal (and called [[Insistent Terminology|indentured servitude]]) as long as the slave-to-be is willing to sign their name on the docket. It's essentially a tourist-friendly [[Wretched Hive]] with pretty gloss over all the corruption.
** Illium is actually a pretty accurate reflection of what anarcho-capitalists think would be an ideal society. Including the part about voluntarily selling yourself into slavery.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' has the Shinra Corporation, which own and runs everything, and we do mean ''everything''. They have the only army in the world (there is talk about a war with a Feudal Japan-style continent in the past), are the only power suppliers in the world, the only space programme ever, and they exert obvious political control over most cities and towns, especially in the first continent you start on. The capital city of Midgar is directly run by them and their HQ is the centre of the city; as the mayor laments to you, his job is just a title. The bosses at Shinra seem to agree with him.
** Shinra's claim to fame (and dominance) seems to be that they control everything they manufactured in self-
* ''[[
* The Druuge in ''[[Star Control]]'' live in this sort of society. Absolutely everything is owned by the Crimson Corporation, which runs a meritocracy based on how profitable an individual Druuge is. Getting fired is a death sentence, because if you're fired, you become guilty of stealing company resource (because you're breathing their air) and are put to death.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Spoofed in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode ''You Only Move Twice'', where Homer gets a job for the fictional [[Mega Corp]] Globex Corporation and the family moves to Cyprus Creek, a town owned and operated by Globex Corp. for its employees, with its own school, shopping centre and boardwalk amongst other things, and presumably all public services are run by the company. The spoof part is that the [[Benevolent Boss]] Homer works for, Hank Scorpio, is actually a [[James Bond]]-style supervillain, so Cyprus Creek also has its own private army good enough to take-on the United States military and a doomsday device apparently capable of destroying France (or Italy, but no-one ever chooses Italy over France). By the end of the episode, Scorpio has seized control of the East Coast and not only buys Homer the Denver Broncoes, he has the entire team shipped to his front door.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* This kind of society is promoted by adherents of at least two ideologies, [[
* Gaelic Ireland was like this for a millennium, between 650 and 1650, when it was conquered by the English. Though society was more based around a hierarchy of extended families, clans and tribal kingdoms of various sizes, rather than corporations in the modern sense. Admittedly, groups could adopt members and even merge together when it was in their interest. Also they were not based on territory, but overlapped in operations as businesses do.
* The Icelandic Commonwealth, which lasted from 930 until 1262, when the church bought up all the ''godards'' (defense agencies), creating a monopoly in defense and the Norwegian kingdom annexed them.
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* King Leopold II of Belgium owned what is now the [[People's Republic of Tyranny|Democratic Republic of Congo]] and considered it a business investment. (That's right, he ''personally owned'' a country well over twice the size of Texas.) The DRC is ... [[Crapsack World|not doing so well now]]. To be fair, it didn't exactly do well back then, either. About that bad or worse—in 1900 the population was roughly half that estimated for 1800, after only fifteen years of his private rule in the [[Blatant Lies|"Congo Free State."]] Every hundredth slave had their hands cut off [[Make an Example of Them|for an "example" of what happened if you stole from the mines]]. That, plus mercenary troops burned and killed whole villages who resisted, along with the brutal slave trade. It ended in 1910 when Anglo-Irish diplomat Roger Casement exposed these atrocities, which prompted Belgium to nationalize the colony and making it better, though still bad. Sir Roger was awarded a medal by the King (ie. the British King George V; ''not'' Leopold, obviously) for his work and ironically he later got hanged for treason after his leadership role in the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule of Ireland.
* Many ancient political systems ran like this. Roman politicians had to discharge the duties of their office (except a few covered by the State treasury) with their own money, recouping the losses with plunder from military campaigns in the provinces. This worked fine when Rome was a single small city-state, it proved rather more problematic as the Empire expanded leading to civil war and the end of the Republic.
* The country of [[
* Did you know that the prison system in USA is privatized? And that Americans have the highest convicts-to-population ratio in the world? That apparently more funds is spent for a single convict than a single student? This is also the country that legally treats corporations as people, make of that what you will.
** More accurately, part of the prison system is privatized. The states still run their own prison systems, as does the federal government.
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[[Category:Older Than Print]]
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
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