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Virtual colonialism
Aug. 11th, 2019 22:09Ran across this in an old notebook. I think I wrote the following some time between 1995-2001, when the Internet and "cyberspace" was new. I think it was an act of worldbuilding, though it's unclear if I was intending this to be for a cyberpunk thriller or a satire of the future. Possibly both?
Virtual colonialism. Outsourcing local governance due to cost. Technological supremacy is the key, allowing the country at the "center" of the empire to maintain an economic monopoly on value-added high tech. Cheap resource prices fuel this economic regime. If the imperial country has a strong military, national security issues can be used to restrict tech export, and thus maintain an economic lead.
Threats: technology advancing faster than the ability to restrict its export. Foreign technological advancement. So-called obsolete technology still scalable, providing unanticipated competition.
To circumvent limitations, multinationals will relocate research facilities to countries with less restrictions. To this end, a unified world government would not be favored by multinationals. They profit from disequilibrium via arbitrage.
Although the market tends toward equalization, it can be made unstable in quasi-predictable fashion (chaos theory). Corporations and governments can collude to build in structural disequilibrium. Yet, they also compete against each other.
That's it. I think I was setting up a world where governments and therefore military-industrial complexes were growing weaker, as the rise of multinational megacorporations would challenge their authority and capability. I'm pretty sure this wasn't after 2001, as I would have rapidly become aware of PMCs.
Virtual colonialism. Outsourcing local governance due to cost. Technological supremacy is the key, allowing the country at the "center" of the empire to maintain an economic monopoly on value-added high tech. Cheap resource prices fuel this economic regime. If the imperial country has a strong military, national security issues can be used to restrict tech export, and thus maintain an economic lead.
Threats: technology advancing faster than the ability to restrict its export. Foreign technological advancement. So-called obsolete technology still scalable, providing unanticipated competition.
To circumvent limitations, multinationals will relocate research facilities to countries with less restrictions. To this end, a unified world government would not be favored by multinationals. They profit from disequilibrium via arbitrage.
Although the market tends toward equalization, it can be made unstable in quasi-predictable fashion (chaos theory). Corporations and governments can collude to build in structural disequilibrium. Yet, they also compete against each other.
That's it. I think I was setting up a world where governments and therefore military-industrial complexes were growing weaker, as the rise of multinational megacorporations would challenge their authority and capability. I'm pretty sure this wasn't after 2001, as I would have rapidly become aware of PMCs.
