Basic Trope: MegaCorp now runs the government.
- Straight: The country of Troperia's armed services, police force, infrastructure network, etc are run by Tropes, Co.
- Exaggerated: The entire world is run by Peace & Love Incorporated.
- Downplayed: Tropes, Co. has a large degree of control over the Troperian government, and is the largest contractor working with them
- Justified:
- Tropes, Co. has enough influence to buy out all the corrupt politicians in Troperia, and uses the power to create a captive market in that area.
- The setting is Post Apocalyptic. Troperia, Inc just happens to be one of the few entities relatively intact enough to stand in for the now obliterated government.
- Inverted: Tropes, Co. is a government-run organization.
- Subverted:
- Tropes, Co. logos are proudly displayed on everything owned by the Troperian government, but it turns out that they just sell a lot of stuff to government agencies.
- Even though Tropes, Co runs several essential services like the transit infrastructure, tax collection, the police force, and healthcare they are merely contractors and still subordinate to the state. Elections include the choice of provider along with their offers.
- Tropes, Co winds up undergoing enough changes to function with needs previously handled by the government that it effectively becomes a conventional form of government.
- Double Subverted: The reason those agencies buy so much from Tropes, Co. is because they secretly control the government.
- Parodied: Troperia is renamed "Nation™"
- Zig Zagged: ...But it turns out that the CEO of Tropes, Co. secretly works for the government, and just lets their underlings think they control the government.
- The situation is muddled enough that it is hard to say who truly owns or controls who or even if Tropes, Co. and Troperia are even technically independent entities or not, let alone how to classify them in terms of how capitalist or communist they are.
- The system operates on one share one vote but every citizen is assured at least one inalienable share with dividends since birth and sizable investments may be used to generate extra shares in a resulting subsidiary. Its purpose is literally to enrich its citizens proportional to their shares, resulting in an openly unequal democracy. Yet the scaling per share for investment tends to be so weak that persuasion is the far cheaper option.
- Averted: Tropes, Co. operates in Troperia but doesn't control the government.
- Enforced: The story contains An Aesop about the dangers of unchecked corporate power.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Tropes, Co. is working on taking over the government of Troperia.
- Exploited: Tropes, Co. uses Troperians as slave labor to make products to ship to other areas.
- Defied:
- The people of Troperia rebel against Tropes, Co. and eventually drive them out and replace them with a new government.
- Tropes, Co. becomes an actual sovereign government, no longer being a MegaCorp.
- Discussed: "So in a world where the government is a corporation, would the average employee/citizen be given money in the form of wages, or would they have money taken from them in the form of taxes?"
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Running a country isn't as profitable as it sounds, which leads to Tropes, Co. squandering all of the local resources and driving the nation deeply into debt before going bankrupt. The people of Troperia are left far worse off even than they were under company rule.
- There is no central government in Troperia, only corrupt and greedy corporations. As a result, Troperian society undergoes a long, slow, painful collapse, gradually sliding into a Great Depression and even past that into Post Apocalyptic Diesel Punk, since there are all these products on the shelves, but nobody is paid enough to actually buy any.
- Reconstructed:
- Another company learns from Tropes, Co.'s mistakes, buys up the company's old assets and reconquers Troperia. They run the government far more efficiently than Tropes, Inc. ever did, and the standard of living begins to go up.
- The government/corporations of Tropeistan have enough foresight to avoid making the mistake of the Troperian corporations, and so have a gentlemen's agreement to pay their employees enough wages to buy each other's products.
- Implied: Everyone seems to be afraid of Trope Co.'s private army, but it's not clear how entrenched they are in the government.
- Played For Laughs: Trope Co. has Skewed Priorities and uses their ownership for downright silly purposes like putting advertisement on Troperia's bills and getting into lengthy arguments about if they should print more money or not to boost nominal profit.
One Nation Under Copyright is owned by Trope Co.
