Why aren't megacorps as big a part of Steampunk as they are of Cyberpunk?

[Staffan]

Eberron's dragonmarked houses aren't a bad example if you want to get megacorp-ish in your Steampunk setting. They do still have at least some government / nobility ties in most cases and mostly aren't as overtly amoral as your standard corp, but they're nevertheless up for some shady stuff under the right circumstances.

I'd call the dragonmarked houses megacorp-adjacent, but not fully megacorpy. They lack quite a few things needed to wield megacorp-level power:

• Can't own land. Their enclaves are rented.
• Other than Deneith, can't field military forces.
• Sticks to their lane. You want to buy manufactured goods? You go to Cannith or a Cannith-approved independent. You need medical care? That's Jorasco. You need a horse? Any breeders nearby are likely Vadalis or Vadalis-approved. But Vadalis has nothing to do with hospitals, Jorasco nothing to do with manufacturing, and Cannith nothing to do with horses (though they might be able to set you up with a construct alternative). There's some wiggle room, such as both Orien and Lyrandar working in transportation, but even then there are borders (Orien does overland, Lyrandar by sea or if you're really rich by air).

Now, one of the intriguing aspects of Eberron is how the houses see that the united realm of Galifar, which enforced these terms on them, no longer exists. So some of them are pushing against these limits, particularly the first two, which is nudging them toward becoming more megacorpy. But that's in the early stages of what's likely to be a long process.

 

[jian]

Of course the great myth of Zaibatsu is that they were these powerful dynasties who could act with impunity. The reality of post-war Japan is that the economy was centrally planned by the new Japanese Government - in particular MITI who was the agency who determined if a Zaibatsu had access to foreign currency or technology, and largely orchestrated the system of horizontal cross investment that keeps Japanese companies interdependent.
It wasnt laissez faire and it wasnt quite state capitalism, it was state negotiated guild capitalism.

And chaebol were basically created by the Park dictatorship in Korea in the 60s, and they did what they were told to do (make steel, make cars, heavy industry mostly) by the government as part of the planned economy. But the chaebol families were allowed to enrich themselves and then diversify their companies in the 80s when democracy arrived, allowing them to become very dominant indeed into the current era.

Impunity was not a myth for chaebol under conservative governments since 2000, but prosecutors get ambitious when there’s a liberal government in town (as there is now) and even occasionally send a chaebol CEO to prison.

 

[MGibster]

I don’t think they need to have a standing army, but private security who can go wherever they like and shoot whomever they like with no functional government controls or law enforcement is close enough.

That sure sounds like a standing army to me.

 

[jian]

That sure sounds like a standing army to me.

I think the main difference is that they’re not designed to engage in wars with other polities, either to defend a position or to invade a position, or generally act strategically with combined arms. That makes them different from, say, the sepoy army of the British EIC.

The difference may seem rather minor when Aztechnology grunts are shooting it out with Ares grunts to retake key installations in downtown Seattle, or whatever. But if Ares can’t hope to invade and occupy Vancouver with their navy and air forces they may not count as an army, just security forces.