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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 115408" data-attributes="member: 259">In Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Red Mars trilogy, he proposes not multinational corporations, but metanational corporations.The idea is that a corporation goes to a very poor country and says, "Look.  We'll pave your roads, repair your schools, equip your police, fund your hospitals.  We'll improve the quality of life for your citizens immeasurably.  Just sign this form (your new constitution, giving us a controlling interest in your government), and we'll get started!"It was pretty plausible, and would be a great setting for a cyberpunk game.  In fact, his earth would, with a few modifications, be a great setting.One other idea that I'd love to see in a game:  food pipes.  Some nutritional scientists in the mid-70s wrote a well-researched article in a peer-reviewed journal explaining the process.Eliminate farms, and instead grow forests.  Each "neofarm" will have a huge chipper, into which the neofarmers regularly feed trees.  The sawdust is mixed into a bacterial slurry that breaks the biomass down into a sugar syrup.  The sugar syrup is then piped to population centers, where it's used as a growth medium for different cell cultures.  Some cell cultures will be wheat cells; some will be tomato cells; some will be pork cells.  And that's where everyone's food will come from.The benefits are reduced fossil-fuel usage (transporting via pipeline is apparently more efficient than via highway or rail), reduced erosion, reduced use of pesticides and herbicides, better wildlife habitat, and so forth.One disadvantage (and there are many others, e.g., "Nasty!") is that these pipelines and cell culture centers would be great terrorist targets:  these facilities and pipes would be really expensive, and the pipes would be difficult to guard, and if one got destroyed, it could cut off food to an entire metropolitan area.I think the piped-in-culture-grown food would be a cool atmospheric touch, and would probably be good for at least one adventure as well.Daniel</blockquote>

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