Lore: Third Corporate War: Neoliberalism
Check out the lore styleguide.
Corporate War III: Neoliberal
(approx. 1980–2010)
Core pattern: the firm rules by standards + supply chains + finance, not flags.
- Sovereignty model: “the market is the government.”
- Primary terrain: trade regimes, logistics, payment systems, deregulation, media, IP.
- Weapons: austerity, structural adjustment, regulatory capture, lawfare, privatization, offshoring, sanctions-as-commerce.
What makes it a corporate war
- War aims are market access + labor arbitrage + privatized commons: The goal was to open every corner of the globe to capital flow and to commodify public services.
- Coercion is systemic rather than overt: Power was exerted through dependency, debt, unemployment, and precarity rather than gunboats.
- States enforce the “rules of the game”: Corporations set the standards (ISO, WTO rules), and states enforced them.
End-state / Transition Driver
The Net + compute + data became the new “land.” Firms started behaving less like competitive market actors and more like lords of enclosed domains, leading to the next era.
Major Battles
The Asian Financial Crisis (1997)
Discipline by Capital Flight
- Major Belligerents: Global Hedge Funds / IMF vs. “Tiger Economies” (Thailand, Indonesia, Korea).
- Stakes / Terrain: Capital account liberalization, asset prices, and national economic sovereignty.
- What Happened: Speculative attacks broke currency pegs. The IMF offered bailouts conditional on extreme austerity and privatization of state assets.
- Outcome: Collapse of local currencies, fire-sale acquisition of Asian assets by Western capital, and the dismantling of state-directed development models.
- Strategic Consequences: Proved that financial markets could discipline sovereign states more effectively than armies.
TRIPS Agreement / HIV Drugs (Late 90s)
IP as a Death Sentence
- Major Belligerents: Big Pharma vs. South African Government / Activists.
- Stakes / Terrain: Patent rights vs. affordable generic HIV medication during a pandemic.
- What Happened: Pharmaceutical companies sued the South African government to prevent the importation of cheaper generic drugs, citing IP violation.
- Outcome: Global public outcry forced the companies to drop the suit, but the TRIPS agreement remained the global standard.
- Strategic Consequences: Established Intellectual Property as the central mechanism of value extraction, even at the cost of human life.
Monsanto vs. Percy Schmeiser (1998)
Biological Enclosure
- Major Belligerents: Monsanto vs. Independent Farmers.
- Stakes / Terrain: Ownership of self-replicating life (seeds) and the right to save seed.
- What Happened: Monsanto sued a farmer whose fields were contaminated by their patented pollen for “using” their invention without a license.
- Outcome: The Supreme Court ruled that patent rights extend to the offspring of patented plants, effectively outlawing seed saving for contaminated farms.
- Strategic Consequences: The enclosure of the biological commons; life itself became a service licensed from a corporation.
← Back to Corporate Wars