There's no middle-class in the sense of what we call middle-class now. You have a super-rich top-exec, SimSens star class. Then, you have a rich class composed of skilled specialists employed by the class previously mentioned. At the end of the Ladder you have the unemployed beggars who barely survive by scrounging, sorting garbage in recycling centers and unclogging sewers. Between this and the rich class you have the class of the temporary employees. Not rich, not poor. They do ok as long as there is a job for them, but this can change very fast. In the same category you have the people working on the street full-time dealing, hustling and selling their asses full-time. All those people might have some skill, but they aren't valuable enough to be kept on the corporate payroll.
Why is cyberpunk such an easy genre to fuck up?Also cyber punk general I guess
With all the real threats that actually plague us like total environmental collapse that will hit before the cyberpunk dystopia comes to term, I see a shift to either surviving on a dying world or rebuilding after the collapse in a post-cyberpunk future (assuming there's any oil left).
Cop campaigns are totally underrated. As a cop, you're undergunned by most corporate-sponsored crime syndicates. Corrupt colleagues, high-ranking officers, judges and politicians make your job more difficult - and I don't even speak about competing services and police precincts. At the same times streetgangs rampage through the city, junkies go crazy because of new synthetic drugs, and psychopaths are out for blood. Medias stirr more shit up every day.
I would agree with that, on pretty much all points - who "the middle class" is very much depends on who you are I think, and who you're talking to.
That said, the income gap between any of the middle class and the top tiers has done nothing but grow though.
I'd say rare, but that shouldn't stop all that stuff being built for governments who try and make up for weakening real power by buying military prestige in carriers, drone-ships and tech from their military industrial complexes (the fact that the corps behind said complexes can lobby with the best of them would help, of course)
This is what I originally meant to say. For me personally, Middle Class is defined by stability. And we now an increasingly large group of people that used to have a secure base of income and social standing that is rapidly eroding.
Considering that inequality is almost always a theme of cyberpunk, at least the stuff that's made in the west, but the middle class, at least in Holland used to be very sharply defined. With the increasing uncertainty facing a lot of people and the splintering of the political landscape, politicians have taken their run with the 'average joe'. If they are in power, they will find statistics that they have done well for the(ir) middle class and if they are part of the opposition they will find statistics to prove how the current government is killing the middle class. Since killing the middle class is considered the cardinal sin in Dutch politics(blame our calvinistic heritage).
This. Corporatism is the problem, not capitalism. A corporation by it's nature is required to have ever increasing profits. This is it's sole pressure and drive. Not to be competitive, not to acquire market share, not to produce a good product - but to make ever increasing amounts of money.
Gentlemen, no thing can ever undergo limitless growth. Eventually you hit market saturation. Eventually you have up years and down years for intangible reasons born from a million uncontrollable variables.
In a capitalist society, as long as A profit is being posted, that is acceptable - you're making money, you're a success. It may be more or less than last year, but you're still in the black and paying your employees.
Corporations MUST have MORE than the previous year, FOREVER, and must ACCOUNT for why when they don't. A CEO who fails to produce this can even be sued and is liable for failing his investors.
Capitalism is, like democracy, an imperfect system that allows over time for improvement. Bad ideas are tried and everyone is given a shot, and with persistence and luck and excellence eventually you can make it
Corporatism locks progress down, it retards the growth of society by pidgeonholing all economic measurement and growth into a single facet, rather than holistically acknowledging an entire market.
The supreme irony is the laws that turned corporations into these monsters were enacted to protect consumers and the public from predatory brokers
And yet so many 'successful' companies nowadays can't seem to make a profit or even project reliable revenue.
Totally. There's a whole generation of temporary workers, lousy-paid trainees coming. All people that won't be able to plan their life on longterm, because everything is temporary. Everything has to be cheap, for rent and one-use.
That does sound punk as hell. A generation of condom people, cheap, disposable and mostly used for someone who owns you to cum in.
That's the thing with corporatism. If they can't make it they change the rules.
A corporatist society isn't a hyper libertarian one where the government does not have the power to stop irresponsible corporations, it's a society where irresponsible corporations have taken control of the government and use it to give themselves all sorts of benefits. It's a society where the government is stronger than ever, only now it serves just the priviliged few.