Corporation Rim

''The Corporation Rim does control a lot of territory, but there are a lot of independent worlds and places outside it and also a lot of unexplored space, basically. In my head, what I see is that there was a whole society—pre-Corporation Rim—that went out and explored and colonized and developed terraformed worlds and all these different places. The Corporation Rim then grew and took over a large section of that. There was a disruption when that happened and so a lot of the pre-Corporation Rim colonies were either destroyed or have been lost. There are a lot of unknown territories out there.'' (Newsweek Interview with Martha Wells)

The Corporation Rim is the most powerful political entity (polity) described in the series, with its territory spanning across a large portion of the galaxy. Rather than a single government, the Rim is a loose organization of many private corporations, which co-exist and extensively trade with each other, but are not bound by any single authority. A space station or planet within the Rim may be owned by a single corporation, which may then rent out space to others, with each having a great deal of control over its own territory. Individual corporations may be concerned with mining resources, terraforming and colonizing new planets, transporting goods or passengers, providing security to other corporations, or any mix of the above, along with other economic pursuits. Most humans living within the Rim will be employees (sometimes indentured) of one corporation or another. Some humans may instead be private contractors, entering temporary agreements with corporations without becoming permanently employed. However, it is not uncommon for entire families to be employed by a single corporation for generations, with their employer shaping most aspects of their lives.

The CR has little in the way of an overarching legal code. Almost the only effective laws in the Rim have to do with the handling of alien remnants; these are respected by most corporations because of the enormous potential danger remnants pose. Contract law is also important; corporations and private individuals doing business with each other must agree to detailed contracts laying out the exact obligations of each party involved. Law and order on stations and planets is enforced by private security forces owned or rented by one or more of the corporations with influence in the territory, and fully subject to the policies and business dealings of these corporate entities.

Though interconnected by strong economic ties, corporations also compete with each other constantly, vying for power and influence. Conflict between corporations may be settled between solicitors in accordance with relevant contracts; but it is also not unheard of for one corporation to openly declare war on another, such as in reaction to a particularly egregious contract breach, or an act of corporate sabotage. Such wars can be as bloody as any conflict between more traditional governments. Even an ordinary "hostile takeover" of one corporation by another may involve both legal manoeuvring and full-out armed conflict with gunships and troops, leading to deaths among the ranks of employees of both combatants. While especially violent and destructive conflicts seem to be rare and newsworthy events, The Corporation Rim as a whole nonetheless treats the risk of such as a normal part of business.

Conflict within a single corporation is also common, with individual employees competing for promotions and standing within their company's hierarchy. Successful managers must avoid any sign of weakness before their competitors or subordinates. For parents building a family within the Corporation Rim, helping their children advance in corporate rank is an important goal.

It is not clear how old the Corporation Rim is, but it is more than 37 standard years old, but probably fewer than 100 years old (Network Effect).

The Corporation Rim spans a large number of star systems. Travel between systems is by wormholes. Within the Corporation Rim, wormhole coordinates are proprietary (like nearly everything else). Pre-Corporation Rim travel seems to have been primarily by cold sleep ships.

This suggests that the Corporation Rim may have been founded after the discovery of wormhole-based travel. It is possible that the discovery of stable wormholes (or technology to make them stable) led to the foundation of the Corporation Rim by creating scarcity through controlling access to wormhole technology and data. (Given the advanced automation, power sources, and physical material resources available to humans, including automated construction of many products and extremely efficient recycling, some other form of scarcity must be present for the Corporation Rim to be able to maintain control.)

The Corporation Rim is an extreme form of capitalism in which everything, including human life, has a monetary value and can be bought and sold. Contract labor (actually, indentured servitude, by any other name) is common, and can even be hereditary. Inhabitants of abandoned or failed colonies do not have ownership of their worlds, but come under the governership of whoever purchases the rights to the colony from the previous owner. There are many varieties of residency within the Corporation Rim which do not qualify as “citizenship.” Surveillance is routine and profit-driven data mining based on this surveillance is common.

Some jobs are considered too dangerous, disagreeable, or sensitive to be performed by contract labor, but still require more flexible thinking than current bot technology can provide. In these cases, corporations will use Constructs, which have even fewer rights (none) than contract labor.