THE EXTENDED POST:
@faraday and I had an extremely long discussion about money and government in the future, and it's changed my plans. Originally I wanted to have USA break down into essentially city-states, everything dependent upon local governments and hyperlocal communities, both relying on the supply-and-demand which are the international corporations.
However, Faraday brought up a key problem: The SIN, the identifier that allows you to get things done. With one, you're marked for life but can get a lot of things done. Without one, you can get a lot of other things done but so much more is difficult to do like "rent an apartment" or "use a bank".
This all came from one of the key feels of Shadowrun that she expressed, and is the reason I set up this thread to begin with: Without the SINless, it isn't really Shadowrun.
I'll argue about a lot of things "not being Shadowrun", but I concede to this. But that brings up so many questions: Who manages the SIN? How do people get paid? How does cash work? My head spirals out of control, so I'm going to put down ideas.
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The SIN is a GUID for individuals. It's a biometric and historical check comprising of DNA, fingerprints, loan history, criminal record, birth certificate and so on. It's everything we fear a universal ID card would be. Problem: Who controls this database? Is it global? Based on government you were born into? Is there an agreement among the corporations to share this information? Each answer changes a lot, such as "is the city-state sprawl feasible?"
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Cash in a post-cash society. If we have the SIN, why do we need cash? What bank or government in the world would risk giving up cash? If the governments were really corporations, why wouldn't they have a 100% Traceable global standard? Or worse, a 100% corporate-only script? This latter one feeds into an idea for "Corporate Enclaves", i.e. living womb to grave in service to a corporation. You work sixteen tons and what do you get?
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Digitally signed currency in a post-cash society. I think we're going in this direction. This is really where the discussion Faraday and I started with: How can you have credsticks when you don't trust anyone around you? For that, she convinced me that the future still needs cash, especially a future with criminals for hire in it. Mind you, if you're getting paid by a government or major corporation, then I'm going to assume that they can get you currency that's hidden in the system. (Thoughts on that one, @faraday? Also, others?)
A RESPONSE WHILE I WAS TYPING THE ABOVE:
@deadculture: Part of what I'm doing is seeing what Shadowrun would look like if it was designed today, right now, as I'm sitting outside a Wendy's looking at the rush hour traffic drive in front of the tri-state area's largest university (and one of the best cancer research hospitals in the country).
For example, the idea of a Southern USA Secession seems outright implausible to me, let alone the Great Ghost Dance reclaiming huge amounts of the southwestern USA, at least not with blood, a lot of blood, and I don't see the natives of this land having those kind of numbers. But that's just my explanation for saying: I don't think it would fly in today's culture.
I think hyper-localized societies makes sense. America is starting to "get" what New Yorkers have known for generations: That Europe is how it is for a reason of population and space, not because "lol Europe". Gibson's Bridge series and Miéville's Bas-Lag series both hit this hard, as well as pretty much anything written by Stephenson.
I do have a singular reason to focus on these authors as templates: I feel cyberpunk should be personal. It should be about people, at least mine will be. I find myself subconsciously focusing on how every element I'm inspecting affects people. Not just the heroes, because in my perfect cyberpunk fantasy world there are no heroes, or they are heroes in the same way that a firefighter or a civil rights champion is a hero: They're heroes to the people around them, the people whose lives they improve.
The world will be the world, but you? You're the person you want to be, if you can make enough space to be that person.