AH Challenge: A realistic Cyberpunk scenario

MrHola

Banned
The free market, either in its liberal or authoritarian forms, is more successful (for example, China might industrialise at the same time as Japan). There is a great deal more prosperity mid-century than in OTL. This has a number of results. First, environmental degradation happens earlier, happens quicker and has larger effects.

All the problems that environmental pessimists envisage us having to face in the next 50 years have already happened by the year 2000. The result is a declining world economy and increasing conflict between nations and peoples. Secondly, technology has become more advanced. Thirdly, the world triumph of the free market has led to greater extremes of wealth and poverty, more powerful corporations, more selfishness, and the decline of traditional cultures in the face of globalisation.

The thing is, how can we, with a POD after 1945) plausibly reach such a scenario?
 
Is this a challange or a statement about a possible development?

If it is a statement, the POD would be no socialist ideas or less sucessful socialist ideas leading to a freer market in the 1950's. I dubt the enviromental problems would be that bad though.

If it is a challange on the other hand, the answer is more sucessful communist ideas. While I'm no expert on the cyberpunk genre, what I'm associate with it is pretty close to the post communist societies, at least the less sucessful ones ranging from Russia to Somalia. At least the weak or non-existing central goverment are there and the destroyed enviroment.
 
The classic William Gibson/Neuromancer POD isn't half bad.

Basically the USA drops special forces into the USSR to disable their nuclear launch facilities using their infowar edge (I think, the book isn't that descriptive about it). This goes badly, the USSR nukes Bonn, and things settle back down.

The USSR grinds down to an end, a joke, a decaying industrial state. The Japanese corporate model is more successful and Europe/USA copies them. This leads to a reduction in national unity and the USA more or less falls apart peacefully under a NAFTA like body doing the basic regulation of a very free market society across the North American continent with smaller government bodies left to their own devices (the BAMA Sprawl, the Eastern Seaboard Nuclear Authority)

Europe holds together somewhat more, but corporations have a lot more power.

Japanese Yakuza basically mount hostile takeovers of all the other organized crime around the world (presumably since Japan is doing better, and the West is doing worse their money/organizational advantage is high).


At the end of the day the middle class only exists if you're part of a Zaibatsu, otherwise you're either poor or rich. Corporations are dominant, and national governments are strictly limited in power with a mix of local government and trans-national organizations doing the heavy lifting.


Is it realistic? Perhaps not, especially given the high resilience the USA has traditionally shown to these kinds of scenarios (post-Civil War, the Great Depression, the late '60s).


I think our POD has to be about the collapse of the USA in some form, as the USSR will take care of itself and the USA could conceivably bring down Europe with it.

This leaves Japan, and especially their corporations, as the major source of wealth. Combine that with a collapsed USA/Europe and we'll get the rich/poor divide we need as well as making large corporations dominant—as only they can offer a middle class job.
 
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