Fix the Biesel Independent Corporations Lore

[FlamingLily]

 

Lore Impact: Small

Species: General

Short Description: Change "Independent corporations are literally illegal in Biesel" to "Independent corporations are legal enough to create, but don't last long if the SCC doesn't want them to."

How will this be reflected on-station?: People can talk about independent corporations, Freelance journalists are allowed to exist, KOTW doesn't contradict the rest of the lore

Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: I think most people have not realised this was even a thing.

Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?  Yes.

Long Description:

  

This section of the lore, on the wiki page for the Republic of Biesel, is incompatible with more recent lore developments, not compelling in a storytelling sense, and just bad for RP generally.

First of all, compatibility: How did Einstein found and presumably register a shell company if they legally weren't allowed to? Keep in mind the shell company was called Republic Flight Interstellar, so it was clearly Biesel based. This section cannot coexist with the KOTW arc, the more recent 'Nanotrasen recovers Phoenix Port' arc, and everything those arcs create.

Also, various pages mention independent stores existing in Mendell, such as D6.

Next: Freelance Journalists. how? How can they be freelance if they're not legally allowed to be an independent corporation? Independent Chaplains get a pass they're chaplains and not really corporate.

(It also explicitly talks about Nanotrasen as if the rest of the SCC doesn't even exist, let alone be in a corporate conglomerate, how old is this paragraph?????)

And finally, my main point: This isn't compelling. It's boring. It doesn't conduct RP in any way. No one can go around talking about how they're a failed businessman, or their favourite shop got bought out by Nanotrasen and the quality declined severely, it's just. "Sorry, this doesn't exist."

In my eyes, a much better paragraph would be:
The Stellar Corporate Conglomerate has an almost exclusive monopoly within the Republic of Biesel. The Free Trade Zone established shortly after independence in 2452, as well as the Corporate Reconstruction Zone created after the Solarian Collapse, served to only reinforce their foothold. Almost the entirety of all business in the system is performed directly by the SCC's constituents, or a branch of them. Business that does not affiliate with the megacorporations are legally foundable; This does not mean they will survive long, however. If an independent business is seen by a megacorporation to be a good investment, that megacorporation will use a variety of above-board and below-board methods to take ownership of it, ranging from simply purchasing the business, to opening a competitor in the vicinity to steal the business' customers, even occasionally going so far as to sponsor power grid maintenance work, shutting off the power to the area while maintenance is carried out, and all the while negotiating for a sale with the business' owner. Rumours even exist of megacorporations paying some less-than-savoury elements to harass, steal from, or vandalise these businesses, and bribing local authorities to neglect to investigate. These rumours, of course, are unconfirmed.

Edited June 21, 2022 by FlamingLily

[FlamingLily]

Neglected to mention this, but the paragraph is also in conflict with the in-game lore snippets

[Caelphon]

I completely forgot about this, but will get back to you by this afternoon. 

[Caelphon]

We have decided that this needs to be remedied, but will do so with heavy modification. This is accepted, but ... not really? The results will be written and uploaded to the AuroraWiki within the next seven (7) days.