Sophont Synarchy
Who now?
The equivalent of human resources in a polyspecific society where they’re more focused on optimizing sophont dynamics in teams-slash-Initiatives on the upside rather than in staving off downsides. Although, on the latter, they are also the people who want to be sure that you’re sane and rational before putting you in a decision-making position. Just checking qualifications, y’know.
Who says that he necessarily came from within the Empire?
No-one. But these are starcorps of Imperial domicile, and if you want to be considered competent to hold high corporate office in said domicile, you’re going to need the appropriate level of tort insurance, and you aren’t going to get that without a few, 'hem, “sanity checks”.
As for the probability concern, I invoke in tandem the “Law of Truly Large Numbers” and the “Black Swan Theory.” Improbable events happen, and in a large and heavily-populated galaxy they may happen with surprising frequency given their supposed improbability.
As a counterpoint, I invoke the lack of spontaneous herring conversion insurance despite that also being guaranteed by the law of large numbers in a sufficiently large universe.
Or, more seriously, it’s a big Earth with a lot of very rich men around, and yet there has yet to be any real-life Auric Goldfinger, Karl Stromberg, Hugo Drax, Elliot Carver, or Elektra King converting their corporate assets into a vehicle for flashy bwah-ha-ha plots, which suggests that in reality they’re likewise below the threshold of Needing To Worry About This In Advance.
Consider the fact that, as you’ve already established here ( https://eldraeverse.com/2013/02/19/were-the-phone-company/ ), companies like Bright Shadow are more than willing to leverage their market position to dictate terms to their customers if they feel it is in their best interests, and that they at present have enough of a market presence that they feel comfortable in doing so without endangering their monopoly. (Which raises the tangential question: Why haven’t any competitors appeared even with prices being so low, if Bright Shadow is already known for doing things like this? Even if there’s no single competitor big enough to challenge Bright Shadow outright on the entire galactic market, wouldn’t there still be the possibility of individual polities and corporations constructing their own “wildcat” stargate links to evade oversight, with these forming a sort of heterogenous network of their own?)
Because their customers like the way they run their networks and enforce terms of service. (Well, not “like”, but prefer to virtually all other possible arrangements of the universe.) Their reputation for doing this sort of thing when freedom of [physical|network] transit is threatened is one of the major selling points for buying from them that helps to maintain their monopoly.
Which is to say, their customers’ eagerness to be able to pull this crap on other people is overwhelmed by their desire for other people not to be able to pull this crap on them. After all, there’re rather more of them.
Look at The Core War. Ring Dynamics maintains the freedom of transit even in the middle of a war. You can’t buy reliability of service like that from just anyone.
Now, there are people who go out and build their own stargate networks and interstellar extranet hardware. At best, they have a reputation issue, to wit, not having one; at worst, people figure that they built their own specifically to get away with some of the deeply hinky stuff that Bright Shadow, say, does not allow on their hardware, like ECHELON or the Great Firewall of China. This does not encourage people to route through them rather than Old Reliable.
So let’s say that rather than doing what he did in canon in trying to surreptitiously deploy his new retrovirus, Vinav Amaranyr had instead realized where that would likely have gotten him, and instead reached out to a group of likeminded people with wealth of their own to form an activist investing fund dedicated to attaining a controlling interest in Bright Shadow’s stock, with the intent of forcing the appointment of a new Board of Directors from among their own (c.f. “corporate raid”).
Bear in mind that Vinav Amaranyr was a Renegade for his view before engaging in the specific plan that got Fourth Directorate to censure him. Now your new hypothetical isn’t a Renegade; he’s just razorwalking along the edge of what’s legal and pretending that that means it’s also moral, and literally everyone can tell that a mile off and is Not Impressed. Just because paracoercion is technically legal doesn’t mean deliberately leveraging it is looked upon favorably by anyone; this sort of thing is social and reputational poison, the kind that ends up with sanctions.
(As I speculated to Amy last night would be coming up because you do somehow seem to keep missing the above point every time it comes up, I must point out that “The [person] you describe has a big old fetish for controlling and/or owning people. On Earth, that makes you a politician, an activist, a truly terrible middle-manager, or President of the Homeowner’s Association. There, however, all that gets you is disinvited from all the good parties and a write-up of your very own in Psychotic Whackjobs Quarterly .”)
In short, this scenario is basically analogous to “the Westboro Baptist Church somehow raises a fairly large country’s GDP in order to buy out Amazon, somehow replaces or buys off everyone who would object to the shift in policy, and make it refuse to deal with any X such that GOD HATES X”, and attracts about the same amount of concern.
This Board of Directors subsequently cancels all outstanding contracts with parties they deem, by their own criteria, to be “irrational” — paying whatever fees are dictated by the cancellation clauses (eldraeic contracts have those, right?) from a “war chest” created by the fund for just such a purpose
They can.
But consider the customers.
You’re a star nation. You’re signing service contracts/leases for wormhole transit and extranet links, two things that are absolutely, utterly vital for not only your prosperity, but for your actual existence.
How enthusiastic are you about such a contract having a rescission (i.e., unilateral cancellation without cause) clause?
These companies sell reliability. Short of a customer default or mutual agreement, they aren’t written to be canceled, or even for their option to renew to be canceled. Their customers need guarantees, so that’s what they’re sold.
