Pollution - Causes, Effects, Solutions and Status in 2077.

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Pollution - Causes, Effects, Solutions and Status in 2077.

It was getting pretty bad in 2020, but how bad do we think pollution will be in 2077?

What sources will this pollution have, particularly within Night City? What effects will it have in the city, its residents and it's facilities? And what do we think will be being done about it?
 
I imagine there will be some closed off industrial districts, where only junkies and alike lives.. With the technology they have, pollution may be fixable, but it would be costly and why would they bother? Nobody important lives there.. And pollution would not be limited to air, a drink of clean water would be almost as expensive as the drugs they take.. People would die by the hundreds every day.. Some because of the polluted air and water, some because of an overdose and some would die off because of thirst.. (because they would not want to drink the polluted water, yet they would spent the money they have on drugs and such..)

High and rich places in the city will have little to no pollution, air would be even fresher than normal.. Some corporations would sell air scrubbing services to rich neighborhoods, which would work to prevent pollution..
 
I never liked the idea of "all is polluted and everyone is poor, sick, hungry and is gonna die". The corps would go bankrupt in a plit second in such world. So, as CDPR like to keep things close to real, I think the pollution in 2077 could be restricted to some 3rd world areas.
 
I never liked the idea of "all is polluted and everyone is poor, sick, hungry and is gonna die". The corps would go bankrupt in a plit second in such world. So, as CDPR like to keep things close to real, I think the pollution in 2077 could be restricted to some 3rd world areas.

But surely the corporatons would stay rich by providing decontaminated and clean air, resources and environments for the wealthy while raking in a profit selling all but useless dispoables to the rat race?
 
I never liked the idea of "all is polluted and everyone is poor, sick, hungry and is gonna die". The corps would go bankrupt in a split second in such world. So, as CDPR like to keep things close to real, I think the pollution in 2077 could be restricted to some 3rd world areas.

I was talking about a small district, not the whole city.. There are some major pollution in same areas of the Night City, but not the whole Night City.. Not everybody is poor and sick.. There are all kinds of people in the city and all kind of places..

But surely the corporatons would stay rich by providing decontaminated and clean air, resources and environments for the wealthy while raking in a profit selling all but useless dispoables to the rat race?

Exactly what i mean.. Well said sir, well said..
 
But surely the corporatons would stay rich by providing decontaminated and clean air, resources and environments for the wealthy while raking in a profit selling all but useless dispoables to the rat race?

While the rich can afford all the fancy toys sales to the "unwashed masses" generate a LOT more profit because of sheer numbers.
 
While the rich can afford all the fancy toys sales to the "unwashed masses" generate a LOT more profit because of sheer numbers.

If that were true, some of the companies we have today couldn't stay in business.. (Like lamborghini and so on) They prefer selling 100 really expensive, high quality products, rather than selling 10000 below average quality products with a reasonable price.. The thing is, in cyberpunk "unwashed masses" can barely pay their bills.. So selling to both would make sense, but depending on the product, they would usually make the real profit from rich people in corporate areas.. This is just my opinion though..
 
Walmart.

They make a lot more money than Lamborghini, ( who are owned by..I'd have to Google.) Much, much more. Staying in business and staying crazily profitable are different.

If you could sell a million dollar house per day to some rich people in the U.S, or sell just $1 worth of goods to every fifth person in China per day, what would you do?
 
Walmart.

They make a lot more money than Lamborghini, ( who are owned by..I'd have to Google.) Much, much more. Staying in business and staying crazily profitable are different.

How do we know how much they make? Lamborghini sells their cars to the world while Walmart is only in US.. Also, Lamborghini was just an example, I'm sure there is a better example for that..

If you could sell a million dollar house per day to some rich people in the U.S, or sell just $1 worth of goods to every fifth person in China per day, what would you do?

It depends on the product, doesn't it.. Unless it is something they can't do without, your product still wont sell any well.. And since about 70% of the people in China work for less than $5 a day, your company wouldn't survive a week.. And we are not talking about a product you need only one of, even with cars, one family can have up to 5 cars, but they will only need one house.. (unless it is an investment, but you would not build a business relying on investments) So, as a product, clean air is something you will always need more of, so they would keep paying for it.. (Imagine a corporation providing air scrubbing service) While poor people from that polluted district could only pay for air pack and not that often..
 
How do we know how much they make? Lamborghini sells their cars to the world while Walmart is only in US.. Also, Lamborghini was just an example, I'm sure there is a better example for that..

Sorry, brother, didn't realise you weren't aware of how huge Wal Mart is. They are kind of famous for their approach in the business world. Here: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/index.html

#2, Fortune global 500. They are so crazy good at what they do, they are above oil companies, car companies, you name it.

Sell lots, cheaply. It works, if you do it right. As for my China example, that was off the top of my head, but if you only lasted five days, selling $1 worth of product to 1/5 (20%, actually fits nicely in the 30% of China that makes more than five dollars a day) of the population..that is about 30 million dollars of revenue from 5 days.

Just five days. The average monthly salary in China in 2011 was 4000 yuan plus, about $650 per month or $20 per day. So if you can get a mere dollar of that, yeah.

Which is what businesses like Wal-Mart try to do.

What you are talking about, boutique or niche marketing to the wealthy, can work. But as the global 500 should tell you, it doesn't work nearly as well as selling to as many people as possible. This would apply to air and filters as well.

it's worth noting that nearly all the other top companies on that list -also- sell lots of product cheaply - they sell oil and gas to millions of customers. Or in the case of State, they sell power - to all those Chinese.
 
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How do we know how much they make? Lamborghini sells their cars to the world while Walmart is only in US.. Also, Lamborghini was just an example, I'm sure there is a better example for that..
Not hard to find out; they're a subsidiary of a public company.

Lamborghini sold 2,121 cars worldwide in 2013. They sell about €500 million in a good year like that. Their parent Volkswagen sells about €200 billion, by selling mass-market cars to the lowest common denominator. Lamborghini's possibly the best example of how being a luxury goods company limits your potential.

The very rich are and will still be a difficult market. There aren't very many of them, they are finicky consumers, and the competition to serve them is fierce. If you're going to make money by selling necessities like air purifiers and bottled water, better to have product everybody will want to buy.
 
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Sorry, brother, didn't realise you weren't aware of how huge Wal Mart is. They are kind of famous for their approach in the business world. Here: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/index.html

#2, Fortune global 500. They are so crazy good at what they do, they are above oil companies, car companies, you name it.

Sell lots, cheaply. It works, if you do it right. As for my China example, that was off the top of my head, but if you only lasted five days, selling $1 worth of product to 1/5 (20%, actually fits nicely in the 30% of China that makes more than five dollars a day) of the population..that is about 30 million dollars of revenue from 5 days.

Just five days. The average monthly salary in China in 2011 was 4000 yuan plus, about $650 per month or $20 per day. So if you can get a mere dollar of that, yeah.

Which is what businesses like Wal-Mart try to do.

What you are talking about, boutique or niche marketing to the wealthy, can work. But as the global 500 should tell you, it doesn't work nearly as well as selling to as many people as possible. This would apply to air and filters as well.

it's worth noting that nearly all the other top companies on that list -also- sell lots of product cheaply - they sell oil and gas to millions of customers. Or in the case of State, they sell power - to all those Chinese.

I know Walmart is big, i was talking about Walmart hypermarkets.. You will need to compare a single business a company owns to another single business other company owns, otherwise it is not a fair comparison.. (one company only sells cars while other has many business)

As for the China example, the important question is if that 30% will bother to buy your product.. If the 70% of the people is very poor, other 30% is either rich or at least above average, they may ignore your cheap product in favor of a more expensive, higher quality product and you could still fail without earning much..

In my example, i wasn't saying they wouldn't sell anything to the washed masses, i was saying they would sell to both and the real profit would come from rich people.. (because it still depends on the product and we are talking about air here.. :D )

Lamborghini sold 2,121 cars in 2013. They pull about €500 million a year in a good year like that. Their parent Volkswagen sells about €200 billion, by selling mass-market cars to the lowest common denominator. Lamborghini's possibly the best example of how being a luxury goods company limits your potential.

OK, again, Lamborghini was just an example.. Volkswagen also sells high end expensive cars.. (although not as expensive as Lamborghini) I was saying selling to both would bring more profit.. Also, original example was air scrubbing service for pollution, lets go back to subject..
 
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Air purification may be a good example, because of the way the business works.

1. Scare people into believing that their air is too filthy to breathe safely. In some places (like downwind of metal shops in L.A.), you don't need to scare people much, because the air already makes people conscious of how bad it is. This is easier to do when the consumers are uneducated and have to live in places like that.

2. Sell air purification units into that market. They don't even have to be good, because of the placebo effect; for that matter, you can sell some number that do nothing at all. Again, the less educated the consumer, the more you can get away with.

3. Sell services into the market that now needs replacement filters and regular maintenance. If you can make your filters expensive enough (making them sound like they do a better job is a good way to raise the price) and easier to replace than clean, you can create a "give away the razor, sell the blades" market.

Result: Air pollution bad enough to be a public concern in working-class districts is a gold mine for the corporates.
 
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While the rich can afford all the fancy toys sales to the "unwashed masses" generate a LOT more profit because of sheer numbers.

If that were true, some of the companies we have today couldn't stay in business.. (Like lamborghini and so on) They prefer selling 100 really expensive, high quality products, rather than selling 10000 below average quality products with a reasonable price.. The thing is, in cyberpunk "unwashed masses" can barely pay their bills.. So selling to both would make sense, but depending on the product, they would usually make the real profit from rich people in corporate areas.. This is just my opinion though..

You both make good points. I am no expert in this area, but I believe there to be some balance to the nature of the business. While the masses do generate considerable income, it must keep said income fluid as the margins are much lower. Meanwhile, high end luxury markets rely on big scores on small amounts if goods.

I would say that both markets could generate high amounts of income but the mass market will be more consistent, where as the luxury market could prove more profitable over a short period of time, if riskier.
 
I know Walmart is big, i was talking about Walmart hypermarkets.. You will need to compare a single business a company owns to another single business other company owns, otherwise it is not a fair comparison.. (one company only sells cars while other has many business).

I'm not sure what you are saying here, Wars. Wal-Mart isn't a multinational in the sense it owns a lot of smaller companies that giev it revenue. it does own some things like vudu, but it's revenue comes from what it does best: discount retail. That's it, that's their secret. "The average US Wal-Mart customer's income is below the national average, and analysts recently estimated that more than one-fifth of them lack a bank account, twice the national rate." This from MSN Money.

The global 500 ranks overall figures - it is very fair to compare one corporate model to another in terms of success. Wal Mart's "Low cost, always" approach has served them very, very well. It has meant that a retail store chain dominates the multinationals that are branched into a dozen different businesses and subsidiaries.

It proves, quite succinctly, that it's much, much better to sell a lot of low priced items that you make a little profit on, to a very, very wide customer base, than it is to sell fewer items to richer customers.

This is quite significant in the Cyberpunk world. Players and non-fans of the genres alike will often scoff at the idea of a Dark Future. "If no one has any wealth, how do the megacorporations survive?" Well, the answer is the Wal Mart method: they take from everyone, all the time, and make sure it's very hard to get ahead. This great funnel of value that pours from the lower classes into corporate coffers is then distributed to the higher income classes, who spend it on the businesses you're speaking of: mid to high end purchases like real food, fancy clothes, nice cars, etc.

The makers of those products hire the lower classes to build and maintain said products. Those classes then spend their meager earnings and the cycle continues. A thriving black market provides a sort of "sanity escape valve" where the vast masses of the poor can afford better products than they would otherwise, by dint of avoiding state and corporate controls.

This, "take a little from everyone and concentrate it in the hands of the rich" approach starts to become a form of economic feudalism, of course. In the long run, it is inferior to a strong, healthy middle-class structure. But that long run can take hundreds or thousands of years to break.
 
As someone who lives in the Walmart Home Base... they are simply unbelievably good at what they do... and you would not believe the level of security their computer servers and home offices entail.
 
Oh, and Wars, while the Walmart brand is US based, it owns other supermarket chains worldwide. They own Asda here in the UK which is either the biggest or second biggest in the country.
 
Are all you guys getting paid by the Walmart or something? You guys focusing on the wrong thing and losing the whole point..

Sure, i knew walmart was big, i thought it owned some side business, didn't know how big it was, didn't care, still don't.. There is no walmart in my country and it doesn't interest me one bit..

Also do you guys remember when i said DEPENDING ON THE PRODUCT? We were talking about air pollution and corporations selling air to people?

I can't believe i say this, but please lets get back to the topic..
 
I still stand by my statement that a company that sells a product the "unwashed masses" want to buy quite probably makes a higher overall profit then a company that sells a handful of very expensive items to the ultra-rich.
Sure if you dig around a bit you can find exceptions, but I'm speaking overall.

That said, I've NEVER though the idea that 65% of the population in Cyberpunk lives below the poverty level made the slightest sense.
Because if that were the case 90% of the companies that market to the middle class (Ford, Frigidaire, Apple Computers, McDonalds, etc.) would have gone out of business.

Now if you claim that their having gone out of business is why 65% of the population is living below the poverty level I say - Nope - they're living on the streets and eating at soup kitchens. Because there is quite simply not enough work to be had to employ them with all those employers out of business.
That being the case the wealthy, middle class, and corporations obviously MUST have a tax rate that make the Swedish taxes look low simply because of the cost to feed that many people at public expense.

That's always been one portion of the Cyberpunk background I find to be total fantasy that can't possibly be supported/justified with any "real world" logic.
 
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The bottomline is the people need to have money to buy food if there is still money after the food they buy/rent housing after they secured those two things they can move to get other things and services again starting with the most basic. A Cyberpunk company that sells cars and guns and drugs shit and has to maintain an army of cyversoldiers and a hundreds of skyscrapers allover the world plus a space station and dozen of satelites need these people to be afluent and reasonably healthy. The same goes for every other company. Even the medical corps need their clients healthy. Sick clients die. Healthy clients stay healthy and want to keep it that way so they are willing to spend a small fortune on medicines. The absolutely the last thing the corps want to do is to design some virus that turns entire human population into flesheating zombies that hunger for brains instead of a new Iphone :) So a typical CP reality when a few tousand people are living in a luxury and every single other one is dying in the slums, poor, hungry, sick and poisoned by toxic waste is bullshit. The corps in that world would go bancrupt in a single day.
 
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