League of Legitimate Businessbeings
Interstellar organised crime syndicate
Started as a beamed power conglomerate in the Audubon and Terranovan colonies, the League of Legitimate Businessbeings expanded into meteoroid and asteroid control, and provided protection for spacecraft on interplanetary transfer orbits.
Absorbing and developing the memetic complexes associated with successful protection syndicates on several worlds, the League expanded into the Free zones of the NoCoZo after the Linnent worlds affiliated with Merrion in 3900.
Most capos of the League are transapient hyperturing AI of the First Singularity level, although the 'ground troops' are generally drawn from human-derived clades.
This paralegal organization is now found in many systems, operates its own security /police force and manages to avoid conflict with local powers by using cost/benefit analysis and carefully-applied extortion.
On some worlds the League has worked together with, or eventually replaced, local or planetary governments for periods of time. Often the local League cartel members have put their past behind them and become truly legitimate and independent.
The League generally has a minor or non-existent role to play in the more centralist Sephirotic empires, but it is still quite powerful and important in the NoCoZo, and to a lesser extent in the Orion Federation, STC and Terran Federation. Often the League continues to operate with the apparent approval of the local Archai, possibly because it provides a certain amount of stability in political matters that may be absent otherwise.
- Crime - Text by Anders Sandberg
Act punishable by law, whether a violation of local regulations or of the sentient rights of another being. Crimes in the ultra-civilized systems of the inner sphere are in general very subtle - data manipulation, fraud, extortion with embarrasing information or purely software crimes like mind casinos. In the less regulated systems smuggling, theft and more property-related crimes start to appear, nd out in the simpler regions traditional seediness and crimes are common.
- Social Criminals
Text by Steve Bowers
Initially published on 14 September 2002.