ECONOMICS 101

by Jericho Hunt

TODAY AT THE SOURCE

Good morning! This is Jericho Hunt with Today at the Source! You might usually read a corporate program at this time on this Screamsheet, but we’ve temporarily improved your regularly scheduled morning junk thanks to advancements in signal hijacking. Ever wonder about the big picture? Now you’re gonna get it. The truth about our supply chain. The one right outside your window.

Night City, it is time to wake up!

You heard the rumors. You saw the advertisements. Now all that’s running through your grey matter is “how do I get that trendy new thing?”. It used to be simple. Twenty years back, the whole world didn’t know how good they had it. Their only barrier was cash on hand. If you had some you could afford all your wants and needs. That was before the Fourth Corporate War and the DataKrash. For us, things aren’t so easy. You don’t just need the cash or something to trade with. You need to know somebody with access to the thing you want. Love them or hate them, that’s your friendly local Fixer. How what you need gets to them, that’s a bit more complicated. Fortunately, you’re listening to the right Media to explain it all.

The Supply Chain

While the Megacorps pretend we’re back in the good old days, advertising to create demand, lying through their sharp teeth, saying you can just head down to the mall to grab what they’re selling, Fixers act like they are damn magicians. Speak thy product’s name and it shalt appear. They are both full of shit. A lot of elbow grease goes into getting your precious product into your hands these days.

How Your Fixer Finds It

You’ve asked your Fixer nicely in the correct denominations and they’ve given you their word, so they grab their Agent and get to work, reaching out to their network. Who do they know? Of course, you’ve got Netrunners eager to sell stolen cargo ship manifest data and other Edgerunners they can call on for favors but that’s only a fraction of their contacts. It may surprise you, but most of a Fixer’s contacts aren’t that illicit. They’re normal people, beavers, at the bottom of the Megacorporate totem pole without Execlevel jobs, like warehouse analysts, quality assurance team associates, and shift lead supervisors, all of whom happen to be open to taking bribes. In this economy, who wouldn’t take a bribe? You can’t really blame them. The Megacorporate cradle-to-grave employment model of the 2020s did not take the DataKrash well. It didn’t die, but it did get cancer. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s terminal. A lot of its tumors kept those jobs-for-life but started a quiet night hustle stealing paper clips and information from the office for your local Fixer. And that’s power if you’ve been paying attention. Let me spell it out.

How Your Fixer Acquires It

With the location of the thing you want, your local Fixer moves to get it. Sometimes they’ve got a bill of sale, and there’s another owner or a Fixer on the other end, so it’s a negotiation. Sometimes it’s sitting in a corporate warehouse, so they bribe a worker or hire a team to retrieve it. Sometimes, it’s supposedly in a Cargo Container last seen in the Pacific a year ago, and I get called to track down which Thelas Nomad ship’s cargo hold it is sitting in. If all this sounds expensive to you, that’s because it is. Expect to pay in full.

How Your Fixer Gets It To You

Assuming the product isn’t already in Night City, either in someone’s warehouse or coming out of one of the increasingly busy local factories, what happens next? Short answer, your Fixer calls a Nomad. Better answer: they book cargo space on a Nomad transport bound for you. They’re likely calling the Aldecaldos if it’s coming from the north or the east or from Mexico or the Jodes if it’s coming from South America. If it’s coming over the Pacific, that’s the Thelas, but it might occasionally be the Meta. If they aren’t dealing with one of the big Nomad Families, that means they’re calling Snake Nation-unaffiliated Nomads. Hey, stay with me. We’re about to get to the point.

Why Your Fixer Does It

You paid upfront. The Fixer got you what you needed. You’re a happy customer. In the process, the Fixer got new contacts by putting your cash in their hands, growing their network. They earned trust, grew their reputation, and got paid doing it. See the big picture? It’s a virtuous cycle. For them. They wouldn’t have it any other way. Oh, and your thing wasn’t the only thing they put on that Nomad Transport, but it sure did help finance the trip. Your local Fixer is cooking up something big, maybe if you do them a favor, they’ll invite you to their Night Market later. For now, let’s focus on that thing you wanted.

Who Made Your Thing

Unless it’s prewar gear sourced from a wayward cargo container, a rare item brought from afar by Nomads, or something new from a local factory, it’s likely an unknown Tech made your thing. Do you really know the name MatchSchtik from who-knows-where your local Fixer sourced from? You don’t need to know. If you did, they would likely have a publicist. It looks like solid work though. Not just anyone can make one of these after all. Consider that by the transitive property of this shit, MatchSchtik’s reputation is your local Fixer’s reputation. So, their name should mean quality to you, and if it doesn’t, you should find a new Fixer, who, now that I think about it, is basically their publicist.

Who Else Do Do Techs Work For?

Typically, no Tech can survive on only a single client, unless they’ve got a Corporate job, and even then, most of them will moonlight. Their clientele isn’t just Fixers. They work for Execs too, building from scrap and scratch what can’t be found in the wreckage the DataKrash turned the shipping networks into, filling the gaping holes it left in the economy. They’ll work for you too. It’s better to buy directly because it earns you the relationship instead of letting the Fixer have it. Just be prepared to get your hands dirty in a way you wouldn’t have to with a Fixer.

But I Want The One In The Advertisement

You got a Trauma Team Executive card? No? Free advice. Don’t look at Corporate advertisements. They aren’t for you. They aren’t for us. You don’t want to meet anyone they do target. If you do, plant the barrel of your gun between their eyes and pull twice, once to get through the subdermal, once for effect, and run as fast as you can. Half the time, you’ve done someone else a favor or saved yourself the same fate. Don’t deal in brand names unless you have to. Scratch the logo out or don’t come up to my table looking like a victim. At least cover it up.

What About The Megacorps?

The Elephant in every room. It’s the nature of our system to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, especially in times of crisis. And, guess what, the Corps specialize in concentration even in the Time of the Red. It’s not like they stopped making consumer goods, supply just went down the drain. Instead of making hundreds of thousands of units, now they’re making hundreds or thousands of units. That’s just enough to keep their operations running and their fat cats nice and fed.

And Those Units Sell. Fast!

Let’s say you’ve heard all about the Rocklin Augmentics newtech being released and you really want it. So, you head on down to Rocklin Aug HQ on release day only to find your precious newtech’s all sold out, even though you showed up an hour early. Guess who knew the exact release time, bribed a Corp beaver to get to the top of the sell list, and backed their truck up to the loading dock last night? If it wasn’t your friendly local Fixer, it was one of seven other Fixers that all competed for their slice. There just wasn’t enough to go around after all. Next time, skip the line to victimize yourself and get a Tech to make you one. Don’t feed the Elephant, feed a Tech. Let’s make our own consumer culture! Be a real fucking punk! But the glitterkids streaming on the Garden Patch have one, you whine? Guess who was first in line to buy from the Fixers who got a slice? Here’s a hint: I just told you to brain them

How Did It Get This Bad Anyway?

The DataKrash shut the Old NET down, and that shut us down. In the 2020s, we were expanding too fast and doing a great job killing each other off in the Fourth Corporate War, mining trade routes with self-replicating mines, sinking ships and wrecking rail lines and blowing up factories. We didn’t think about side effects. Drive twenty minutes outside of the city limits and look around. Have you ever seen a historical picture of California? Compare it to the real thing and think about what we did to it. If we cared this little about the environment, do you think we cared about NET security? Even if Bartmoss hadn’t blown up the Old NET, it would have happened eventually. We were driving too fast. The flaw was a cultural one, and we haven’t fixed it since. We’ll recover from this, and we won’t learn. The beast will live.

How Did The Nomads Do It?

In the 2020s, the supply chain was as big of a beast as the beast of an economy it fed. Nomads were there, just under the surface, on every merchant vessel, and behind the wheel of most every truck. Who did you think had the skills to do those jobs anyway? The supply chain was reaching toward being entirely AI-driven but hadn’t quite reached it yet. Logistics depended entirely on algorithms that were themselves built by algorithms, managed by a thin veneer of human interaction. Already weakened by war, when the DataKrash hit, each link on the chain feeding the beast didn’t understand where its next link was. Every link shattered, independently. The humans, many of them Nomads, who had been painted thin atop the chain were left in the possession of thoughtless robots and the inventories of their vessels. For the first time in ever, they were in control of the — you ever hear the term means of production? Same thing goes for means of transport, too. As the world broke around them, those humans were left with the keys to the kingdom, basically. Some couldn’t handle the pressure, became road gangers, and stood in the way of progress. Others rose up, joined together with their Families, and did their job without the assistance of the robots. Only, when they arrived at their destination, they didn’t work for the Corps anymore. They worked for themselves.

Lifestyles in Brief

Lifestyles. They’re named after food types but cover more than just what you eat. The Lifestyle cost you shell out each month is a single payment covering what you’ve budgeted for the necessities and, sometimes, the luxuries of life. In other words, you don’t need to spend extra Eurobucks to buy anything. Beyond that? It comes out of your pocket. You may notice the benefits of a Lifestyle add up to more than the cost of the Lifestyle. That’s on purpose and represents a combination of bulk buying, service contracts, and the discounts afforded to you by achieving a certain level of class status, even if only for a month.