If there is one overarching theme of the modern world of the Three Amigos - and a message that it had spread to the world around them - it was that when people work together for common goals, what can be created is far, far more than the sum of its parts, and the second half of the 20th Century, with jet airliners and high-speed trains and satellite television and mobile communications and the internet, saw the opportunities for unity among peoples based on their common goals, interests, desires and identities grow to degrees once thought unimaginable, but that growth in the possible wasn't merely limited to individuals, but corporate bodies, charities, unions, professional organizations and even nation states.
In Japan the system of alliances between companies is often referred to as the Keiretsu, while in the Americas it is often referred to as the Partnership, but the meaning is the same - alliances of companies or firms operate with the objective of benefitting all members involved, and in many cases these efforts have been highly successful. In both cases these alliances are often centered around banks or financial institutions (though not always) and can involve hundreds or even thousands of firms chasing similar goals, ranging from more prosaic items (such as two chains of stores making a point of not locating in each other's immediate geographic area so as not to cannibalize each other's sales) to much more strategic positions, such as major infrastructure projects being built by the Partnerships using each other's products wherever possible. While this is somewhat changed where standards are required by codes or regulations (such as with residential power supplies and their power sockets and associated plugs or mobile network standards) or desirable (such as home electronics components and their associated interfaces), often this manifests itself even in consumer goods markets that otherwise might be difficult for a firm to survive in without its partners. Such examples of co-operation are common even in a lot of the industries for higher-priced consumer goods, with the famous hookup between Atari and Sony that began with the Sony Playstation and Atari Jaguar in 1994 (the two are different systems in terms of hardware but can play each others' games and use each others' peripherals) and Eastman Kodak's making the film and development equipment for IMAX movies before both dove into digital cameras and filmmaking as partners in the 1980s and 1990s. What often goes with this is the companies in question usually having many of their higher-ranking executives having frequent contact with each other - troublesome to some, perhaps, but widely seen in modern times as being an unavoidable reality. The governments of the Amigos play major roles in shaping many of these alliances as well - antitrust and competition law in North America forbids many of the more obvious collusion between firms in individual markets, and many segments of the economy are quite substantially regulated for safety or public service reasons, though all three Amigos countries have a long history of agreements between their governments (both the federal governments and state and provincial ones, and in many cases municipal ones as well) and the private sector firms, usually creating something of a quid pro quo situation - government provides advantages and gets benefits for society back in return. These agreements are in many states zealously enforced - California, New York, Texas, Ontario, British Columbia, Florida, Georgia and Nuevo Leon have particular reputations for this - though the ability of governments to use private firms for the benefit of their citizens is a common trend in the Amigos. This dates back all the way to the original public trust regulations of canals and railroads in the mid-19th Century and continues to this day, particularly in fields most important to people's safety and well-being.
In the higher-wage landscape of the Amigos (and Europe, the Commonwealth and many parts of Asia), the Partnerships cannot rely on the growing wealth of the countries or their citizens to expand their operations, resulting in a need for many of these partnerships to make better products for consumers - and as consumers in these countries have long ago developed a deep distaste for products that are not durable and reliable as a result of cost-cutting measures in their manufacture, making cheaper products is often simply not an option - the way to advancement for these companies is to make better products. This is helped in the Amigos by the fact that the aforementioned willingness among governments to make deals (and ensure their provisions are followed) and the social contract among its peoples, these providing a rock-solid base that ensures as few people as possible fall through cracks in that base. That knowledge that one will almost never starve or lose everything for striking out on one's own and taking their shot at a dream has made entrepreneurship more common in the Amigos countries than just about anywhere else in the world, and it is highly common at all levels of society and in virtually all fields or trades. The stories of people going from 9-to-5 jobs to vast riches is known well among the Amigos, but equally well known is people who start at similar points and make their own much smaller (but still successful) businesses. Many in the Amigos know (or know of) someone who abandoned such work and made themselves much happier by starting their own restaurant, store or other such small business, even if they didn't make millions on it but instead came to have that sense of happiness at, as was famously put by salesman-turned-stockbroker-turned-entrepreneur Chris Gardner, who quipped "Life truly is about the pursuit of happiness, in whatever form that comes in. For some it will always be wealth, for some it will always be comfort and for some it will be an ambition, a legacy. What matters is the self-improvement."
There is, of course, an important caveat to these desires for self-improvement - those who try to get ahead by cheating or harming others rarely prosper, and even some huge fish have gotten in trouble for this - Microsoft was one famous example, ordered by Washington to be split into three separate companies in 2001 after years of investigations into its anticompetitive practices, while the Savings and Loan Crisis in the United States in the late 1980s led to multiple rounds of stiffening legislation for financial sectors in the 1990s. While the laws of the Amigos are vast in their provisions against antisocial and anticompetitive behavior, departments in all three countries have long ago made it clear to their business communities that being good citizens means benefits but being bad ones will bring liabilities, and the executives don't want that. The message has long ago got through, and in modern times rare is the business sector that is so cutthroat that those unable to play the game lose everything. While shifting economic times have not always been beneficial for regions of the country in many places, one common theme of the post-war era is that governments at all levels (and many other organizations, from charities to religious organizations to professional groups and even many corporations) do their best to make sure communities left behind are just as few and far between as people left behind.
The push for entrepreneurship has been a particular help here. Cities like Winnipeg, Manitoba (which went from transport center and food processing center to a major aerospace industry hub), Sydney, Nova Scotia (from steelmaking to advanced engineering and energy research), Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (from coal mining to making toys, tourism and producing carbonfiber), Cleveland, Ohio (from steel and metal products to being one of the most important healthcare research cities on the planet) and Guadalajara, Jalisco (which became one of the world's major avantgarde design centers from the 1980s onwards) saw their old reasons for existence be replaced by new ones, replacing once-huge industries that had shrunk dramatically in size due to changing times with new businesses and new culture, and that saws nothing of cities whose growth is much more recent - count Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Seattle, Austin, Albuquerque, La Paz, Monterrey, Cancun, Lethbridge and Kingston among these - whose cityscapes are often much newer than older places and are often made up more of people who come to these places to make a better life for themselves. Such wanderlust for the betterment of one's self is a common these among the Amigos' cultures in all three nations, and has contributed in not a small amount to the vast amount of tourism in the Amigos countries and the number of people from all three countries who regularly venture abroad. In all three countries the majority of the population has an active passport at any given time, and the post-Energy Crisis resuscitation and growth in the passenger railroad networks of the Amigos saw a lot of shorter-range air traffic replaced by longer-distance flights, this being particularly notable in cities where interest in them is global as well as major airports in coastal cities. Few places in the Amigos could ever be considered poor, though obviously there are differences with what different places are known for - New York, Mexico City and Toronto are famous for their financial sectors, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Toluca for the movie industry, Detroit and Saltillo for its cars, Atlanta for its clothing, Seattle for its airplanes, the San Francisco Bay Area for its computers and tech industry, Miami, Cancun, Guanajuato, Nassau and Las Vegas for being resort paradises.
Among the elements of society in the Amigos that is most notable is "The Club". While some less-than-reputable establishments use the term "gentlemen's club", for virtually all major cities in the Amigos' countries the term has a special meaning to it, knowing that it refers to private, members-only establishments that are by invitation only, with the simple act of becoming a member in many of the best of these being a sign to all of just how far one has some in society. While these clubs are often for the most elite in society, there remain a vast plethora of clubs and fraternal organizations for those of lesser means, ranging from those catering to men and women in specific fields of employment or vocation (this is common in the skilled trades), those for alumni of various universities and colleges and a vast array of social clubs for those of many different backgrounds, interests and activities. With these clubs in a great many cases came their clubhouse, the greatest of which are in more than a few cases considered landmarks of their individual cities and towns, while many others are often remarkable places for other reasons - the richest of car clubs, for example, have their own private racetracks and garages, while many clubs for art often more resemble a good art gallery than any clubhouse, many of the best music clubs of the Amigos also operate some of the best concert and music venues in the world and clubs with an interest in sports often have the facilities needed to play those sports, from basketball and tennis courts to baseball and soccer fields to golf courses. Many of the clubs specializing in various vocations regularly enjoy showing off their interests to visitors through their club facilities having open houses or being open to visitors at specific times to allow one to see just what goes on in these places. These organizations are hugely popular among the Boomer Generation and those who followed them, owing to the greater sense of a common community among these people - rare is the person who doesn't carry the membership cards of his chosen cards with considerable pride, and the community spirit among these people has made many of these organizations capable of remarkable things, both for their members and for the world around them, and this community spirit regularly shows in the social scenes of the cities themselves, with this being most seen in places that get vast quantities of visitors or are home to famous events (such as Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Día de los Muertos in Mexico City, Winterlude in Ottawa, the Pride Festival and Caribana in Toronto, Welcome America in Philadelphia or the Thanksgiving Day Parades in New York, Detroit and Chicago), as well as in major state or national fairs and exhibitions, which are almost always very well attended and supported.
From the late 1960s and famed events like the Monterrey Pop Festival and Woodstock, music festivals and outdoors performances became major events themselves, that growth culminating in the legendary Live Aid Concerts of July 13-14, 1985, which is widely considered to be one of the great truly human moments in modern history and which rewrote the rules of much of the world's music industry, as well as becoming the single greatest fundraiser for a cause in human history. After Live Aid numerous music events became international phenomenons, with the likes of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, Coachella, Burning Man, Peachtree Festival, Tomorrowland, South by Southwest, MYSTIK and Lollapalooza gaining global attention, with the likes of Burning Man and Tomorrowland adding to the story simply by making the festival more than just about the music, a story quickly copied by countless others. Several attempts at creating commercial music festivals came and went in the 1980s and 1990s after Live Aid, and particularly after the first attempt to revive Woodstock was a flop and the second one became a dangerous fiasco, the commercial organizers faded from the scene in favor of many independent organizers, which became a prelude to the rise of the independent music industry in the 2000s.
For unions, the changes to many workplaces after the Energy Crisis could have been a potentially-crippling problem (and some unions, particularly the Teamsters, had the problem of organized crime involvement become hugely public in the late 1950s and early 1960s), but over the 1960s and the entry into the workforce of the Boomer Generation, the role of many unions changed dramatically, as did relations between the unions themselves and many of their employers, this most visibly seen with the United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Service Employees International Union, United Transportation Union and United Mine Workers, all of whom became critically important with their industries' adapting to changing times in the 1960s and 1970s.
In Japan the system of alliances between companies is often referred to as the Keiretsu, while in the Americas it is often referred to as the Partnership, but the meaning is the same - alliances of companies or firms operate with the objective of benefitting all members involved, and in many cases these efforts have been highly successful. In both cases these alliances are often centered around banks or financial institutions (though not always) and can involve hundreds or even thousands of firms chasing similar goals, ranging from more prosaic items (such as two chains of stores making a point of not locating in each other's immediate geographic area so as not to cannibalize each other's sales) to much more strategic positions, such as major infrastructure projects being built by the Partnerships using each other's products wherever possible. While this is somewhat changed where standards are required by codes or regulations (such as with residential power supplies and their power sockets and associated plugs or mobile network standards) or desirable (such as home electronics components and their associated interfaces), often this manifests itself even in consumer goods markets that otherwise might be difficult for a firm to survive in without its partners. Such examples of co-operation are common even in a lot of the industries for higher-priced consumer goods, with the famous hookup between Atari and Sony that began with the Sony Playstation and Atari Jaguar in 1994 (the two are different systems in terms of hardware but can play each others' games and use each others' peripherals) and Eastman Kodak's making the film and development equipment for IMAX movies before both dove into digital cameras and filmmaking as partners in the 1980s and 1990s. What often goes with this is the companies in question usually having many of their higher-ranking executives having frequent contact with each other - troublesome to some, perhaps, but widely seen in modern times as being an unavoidable reality. The governments of the Amigos play major roles in shaping many of these alliances as well - antitrust and competition law in North America forbids many of the more obvious collusion between firms in individual markets, and many segments of the economy are quite substantially regulated for safety or public service reasons, though all three Amigos countries have a long history of agreements between their governments (both the federal governments and state and provincial ones, and in many cases municipal ones as well) and the private sector firms, usually creating something of a quid pro quo situation - government provides advantages and gets benefits for society back in return. These agreements are in many states zealously enforced - California, New York, Texas, Ontario, British Columbia, Florida, Georgia and Nuevo Leon have particular reputations for this - though the ability of governments to use private firms for the benefit of their citizens is a common trend in the Amigos. This dates back all the way to the original public trust regulations of canals and railroads in the mid-19th Century and continues to this day, particularly in fields most important to people's safety and well-being.
In the higher-wage landscape of the Amigos (and Europe, the Commonwealth and many parts of Asia), the Partnerships cannot rely on the growing wealth of the countries or their citizens to expand their operations, resulting in a need for many of these partnerships to make better products for consumers - and as consumers in these countries have long ago developed a deep distaste for products that are not durable and reliable as a result of cost-cutting measures in their manufacture, making cheaper products is often simply not an option - the way to advancement for these companies is to make better products. This is helped in the Amigos by the fact that the aforementioned willingness among governments to make deals (and ensure their provisions are followed) and the social contract among its peoples, these providing a rock-solid base that ensures as few people as possible fall through cracks in that base. That knowledge that one will almost never starve or lose everything for striking out on one's own and taking their shot at a dream has made entrepreneurship more common in the Amigos countries than just about anywhere else in the world, and it is highly common at all levels of society and in virtually all fields or trades. The stories of people going from 9-to-5 jobs to vast riches is known well among the Amigos, but equally well known is people who start at similar points and make their own much smaller (but still successful) businesses. Many in the Amigos know (or know of) someone who abandoned such work and made themselves much happier by starting their own restaurant, store or other such small business, even if they didn't make millions on it but instead came to have that sense of happiness at, as was famously put by salesman-turned-stockbroker-turned-entrepreneur Chris Gardner, who quipped "Life truly is about the pursuit of happiness, in whatever form that comes in. For some it will always be wealth, for some it will always be comfort and for some it will be an ambition, a legacy. What matters is the self-improvement."
There is, of course, an important caveat to these desires for self-improvement - those who try to get ahead by cheating or harming others rarely prosper, and even some huge fish have gotten in trouble for this - Microsoft was one famous example, ordered by Washington to be split into three separate companies in 2001 after years of investigations into its anticompetitive practices, while the Savings and Loan Crisis in the United States in the late 1980s led to multiple rounds of stiffening legislation for financial sectors in the 1990s. While the laws of the Amigos are vast in their provisions against antisocial and anticompetitive behavior, departments in all three countries have long ago made it clear to their business communities that being good citizens means benefits but being bad ones will bring liabilities, and the executives don't want that. The message has long ago got through, and in modern times rare is the business sector that is so cutthroat that those unable to play the game lose everything. While shifting economic times have not always been beneficial for regions of the country in many places, one common theme of the post-war era is that governments at all levels (and many other organizations, from charities to religious organizations to professional groups and even many corporations) do their best to make sure communities left behind are just as few and far between as people left behind.
The push for entrepreneurship has been a particular help here. Cities like Winnipeg, Manitoba (which went from transport center and food processing center to a major aerospace industry hub), Sydney, Nova Scotia (from steelmaking to advanced engineering and energy research), Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (from coal mining to making toys, tourism and producing carbonfiber), Cleveland, Ohio (from steel and metal products to being one of the most important healthcare research cities on the planet) and Guadalajara, Jalisco (which became one of the world's major avantgarde design centers from the 1980s onwards) saw their old reasons for existence be replaced by new ones, replacing once-huge industries that had shrunk dramatically in size due to changing times with new businesses and new culture, and that saws nothing of cities whose growth is much more recent - count Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Seattle, Austin, Albuquerque, La Paz, Monterrey, Cancun, Lethbridge and Kingston among these - whose cityscapes are often much newer than older places and are often made up more of people who come to these places to make a better life for themselves. Such wanderlust for the betterment of one's self is a common these among the Amigos' cultures in all three nations, and has contributed in not a small amount to the vast amount of tourism in the Amigos countries and the number of people from all three countries who regularly venture abroad. In all three countries the majority of the population has an active passport at any given time, and the post-Energy Crisis resuscitation and growth in the passenger railroad networks of the Amigos saw a lot of shorter-range air traffic replaced by longer-distance flights, this being particularly notable in cities where interest in them is global as well as major airports in coastal cities. Few places in the Amigos could ever be considered poor, though obviously there are differences with what different places are known for - New York, Mexico City and Toronto are famous for their financial sectors, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Toluca for the movie industry, Detroit and Saltillo for its cars, Atlanta for its clothing, Seattle for its airplanes, the San Francisco Bay Area for its computers and tech industry, Miami, Cancun, Guanajuato, Nassau and Las Vegas for being resort paradises.
Among the elements of society in the Amigos that is most notable is "The Club". While some less-than-reputable establishments use the term "gentlemen's club", for virtually all major cities in the Amigos' countries the term has a special meaning to it, knowing that it refers to private, members-only establishments that are by invitation only, with the simple act of becoming a member in many of the best of these being a sign to all of just how far one has some in society. While these clubs are often for the most elite in society, there remain a vast plethora of clubs and fraternal organizations for those of lesser means, ranging from those catering to men and women in specific fields of employment or vocation (this is common in the skilled trades), those for alumni of various universities and colleges and a vast array of social clubs for those of many different backgrounds, interests and activities. With these clubs in a great many cases came their clubhouse, the greatest of which are in more than a few cases considered landmarks of their individual cities and towns, while many others are often remarkable places for other reasons - the richest of car clubs, for example, have their own private racetracks and garages, while many clubs for art often more resemble a good art gallery than any clubhouse, many of the best music clubs of the Amigos also operate some of the best concert and music venues in the world and clubs with an interest in sports often have the facilities needed to play those sports, from basketball and tennis courts to baseball and soccer fields to golf courses. Many of the clubs specializing in various vocations regularly enjoy showing off their interests to visitors through their club facilities having open houses or being open to visitors at specific times to allow one to see just what goes on in these places. These organizations are hugely popular among the Boomer Generation and those who followed them, owing to the greater sense of a common community among these people - rare is the person who doesn't carry the membership cards of his chosen cards with considerable pride, and the community spirit among these people has made many of these organizations capable of remarkable things, both for their members and for the world around them, and this community spirit regularly shows in the social scenes of the cities themselves, with this being most seen in places that get vast quantities of visitors or are home to famous events (such as Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Día de los Muertos in Mexico City, Winterlude in Ottawa, the Pride Festival and Caribana in Toronto, Welcome America in Philadelphia or the Thanksgiving Day Parades in New York, Detroit and Chicago), as well as in major state or national fairs and exhibitions, which are almost always very well attended and supported.
From the late 1960s and famed events like the Monterrey Pop Festival and Woodstock, music festivals and outdoors performances became major events themselves, that growth culminating in the legendary Live Aid Concerts of July 13-14, 1985, which is widely considered to be one of the great truly human moments in modern history and which rewrote the rules of much of the world's music industry, as well as becoming the single greatest fundraiser for a cause in human history. After Live Aid numerous music events became international phenomenons, with the likes of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, Coachella, Burning Man, Peachtree Festival, Tomorrowland, South by Southwest, MYSTIK and Lollapalooza gaining global attention, with the likes of Burning Man and Tomorrowland adding to the story simply by making the festival more than just about the music, a story quickly copied by countless others. Several attempts at creating commercial music festivals came and went in the 1980s and 1990s after Live Aid, and particularly after the first attempt to revive Woodstock was a flop and the second one became a dangerous fiasco, the commercial organizers faded from the scene in favor of many independent organizers, which became a prelude to the rise of the independent music industry in the 2000s.
For unions, the changes to many workplaces after the Energy Crisis could have been a potentially-crippling problem (and some unions, particularly the Teamsters, had the problem of organized crime involvement become hugely public in the late 1950s and early 1960s), but over the 1960s and the entry into the workforce of the Boomer Generation, the role of many unions changed dramatically, as did relations between the unions themselves and many of their employers, this most visibly seen with the United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Service Employees International Union, United Transportation Union and United Mine Workers, all of whom became critically important with their industries' adapting to changing times in the 1960s and 1970s.
