The United Laniakean Incorporated Sovereignties & Indentured States (ULISIS) is a byzantine group of private entities and super-national structures that sometimes trust each other less than they trust outsiders. The ULISIS appears to be a unit through a confluence of interests, entangling relationships, and mutually entrapping binding agreements & regulations between competitors than actual cooperation.
History
Origins
Though humanity eked out a victory in the AI Wars, the effort nearly exhausted the resources of its governments. Private capital already had the upper hand, but the Great Leveraging - a joking name that stuck - was the death blow. Nearly every government on earth went deeply into debt to fund the war.
Afterward, a UN convention was held to discuss the debt problem, in response to massive public outcry that the loan terms had been extortionate in the face of dire circumstances. Some fought for complete forgiveness of the debt and nationalization of the corps required to ensure humanity’s survival. Others simply fought for a renegotiation of the terms. Neither won out.
The convention resolved that stabilizing the international economy would take precedence over preserving the solvency of states. The fall of a center of private capital would have disastrous cascading effects across nations compared to the greater but more contained chaos of the fall of a state.
However, the UN lacked the enforcement measures to prevent debt defaults. Corps could seek redress in the ICC, but if a state dissolved their loan was forfeit. A resolution was reached to form an international debt-enforcement framework, UnitedNationsDebtEnforcementFramework(Rename). Some of the private debtholders reduced their principals in exchange for official recognition of sovereignty as state-level actors. States were prevented from defaulting on their debt and were forced to accept major austerity measures.
Formation of ULISIS
Demographics
Population
Language
Religion
Family Structure
Health
Education
Science & Technology
Government & Politics
Subdivisions
The legal framework consists of multiple de jure sovereign governments that serve to enforce and legitimize the rule of the corporations that control it behind the scenes. In practice, the states hold no real power, and the ULISIS would be considered Anarcho-Capitalist at best, or Fascist at worst. But elections are held, and a façade of accountability and freedom of movement/choice is maintained under nominal democracy.
Citizenship
Legal status of individual citizenship is often dual: Most are citizens of states, but many are also citizens of Corps. Corporate life is so all-encompassing that one often has more in common with a co-employee of the same corp than a co-citizen of the same government.
Interplay between States & Corporations
Any given state may be dominated by one or many corporations, or in the case of The PRC it may have maintained considerable independence due to the size of its market. States serve to establish legitimacy and quell dissent while keeping the corps’ hands clean. They are also manipulated in various ways as a means to block competitors’ access to markets.
Competition between Corporations
The corporations are perpetually at low-grade warfare with each other. Espionage is ubiquitous, and occasionally boils over into messy proxy warfare between subservient client states, private security firms and "independent" operatives.
There is a strong undercurrent of chaos that might break its authoritarian bonds if it weren't directed against itself or strung along by mirages of economic opportunity.
Rulership
The ULISIS is a chaotic system that generally allows a positive feedback loop of accrual of power.
Foreign Relations
Their outward policy is toward rapacious expansion and short-term extraction of resources. Since corps follow only the profit motive, they are the most ruthless players in the galaxy. The ULISIS would be truly dangerous if it were a unified force, but… it’s not. Much of the danger is directed inward at sabotaging the competition or stomping down the underclasses.
Criminal Enforcement & Resolution of Civil Disputes
Economy
Nominally a classless society, but economically stratified. Nearly everything is commoditized. Aspects of Feudalism & Imperialism.
Social Divisions
Classes divided by Political Economy
Top Tier
Wealthy beyond royalty or oligarchy. Often Alpha-humans. Generally live cloistered in top levels of Arcologies, or other exclusive spaces.
Within the mass media their class controls, and often the wider ULISIS culture at large, their lives are the objects of reverence akin to celebrities or royalty.
Insiders
“Insider” is the term most commonly used to refer to one who works for a corp and lives in one of its Arcologies or the corporate enclaves outside the Arcos. The most common pejorative is “Arco-Scum,” which in the linguistic melting pot of the Outside became “Koska.”
As the Arco is a self-contained city and generally an island of relative safety, there are many who spend their whole lives without leaving.
Citizens commonly hold insurmountable debt, either through their own accrual, inheritance from generations of their ancestors, or as reparation for violation of draconian legal codes.
Almost all are subjects and dual-citizens of the corp that holds their debts. A corp generally exerts complete dominance over their lives, providing and charging for all necessities and paying in company-restricted chit instead of actual currency. Most are resigned to a life of inescapable serfdom.
A few token citizens acquire nominal freedom through the lottery, but by necessity this is generally not enough to change their life except in terms of conspicuous consumption. There is also a token amount of social mobility - but just enough to keep people working hard in hopes of getting it, not enough to actually make the classes permeable. But most buy the lie and devote their lives to acquisition and consumption. Generally strong culture of loyalty to essentially meaningless but numerous consumer options or state memberships.
Not all Citizens are debt-enslaved, however. Many are of the professional classes who are content to live in corporate Arcologies or the nicer enclaves of the Outside. The lifestyles of these scant few petty bourgeois only cost pocket change to the corps who benefit from their existence.
Outsiders
Many choose to escape the trap by erasing their identity, becoming a part of the criminalized classes in the process. This is a much more dangerous world but it does carry the possibility of freedom for the lucky ones. This is the world of the Outside - outside the clean and safe corporate arcologies and stations, where social order hangs on by a thread.
The Outside is not only tolerated but appreciated. Its citizens provide a good underclass ripe for exploitation or scapegoating whenever necessary. It’s also something they can point to as a warning to those who misbehave on the Inside. Life on the Outside is so apparently dirty & brutal that many Insiders would kill themselves before submitting to exile.
Disempowered and hopeless but placated by bread & circuses. They are targeted with corporate propaganda, but their lives are bad enough that very few of them consciously buy it. However, the Spectacle works its Sorcery in subtle ways, so many are indoctrinated as much as Arco-Scum, only more subtly.
Extremely diverse and permeable, rife with criminal activity.
Infrastructure
Culture
Many of the nations in the ULISIS are partly owned via debt-leverage by various corps, and the corps all generally have parts of various nations. So one might identify with the nation of their citizenship, but also as a member of their employing corp.
Culture is dominated by the brands & consumer choices that pervade CIS society. It is not uncommon for people to name their children after their favorite brand, even if a stipend for doing so is not on offer.
Food
Literature, Philosophy, Visual Art, Music, etc.
Sports
Mass Media
General Aesthetics
Values
ULISIS culture is heavily focused on acquisition, opulence, and comparison. Media gravitates around avatars of impossible perfection and abject misery, imparting a driving sense of competition that blinds citizens to avenues for real change.
Gameplay
Generally aggressive and powerful. High emphasis on acquisition. Different power-players in ULISIS are best beaten by pitting them against each other.