I seem to recall we had a thread some years ago about Fenspace's "super-rich," but we never got around to saying exactly who they were.
So here's my candidate list.
- At the top is Chris Marsden (owner and CEO of Greenwood), followed closely by Noah Scott (owner and CEO of StellviaCorp).
- A slightly-distant third is Padraig O'Niell (owner and CEO of CHOAM).
- After these three comes Don Antonio Esposito (who ... *ahem* ... operates a Family business).
- Then there's The Jason (the preeminent Mad Biologist/Geneticist of Fenspace).
But there are others who might qualify for the list: the McManuses (who put Pallas in a plastic bag), A.C. Peters (Fenspace's top Mad Cyberneticist), Robur ("the other guy with a private station"), and the folks at Hephaestus and JMC (they own Hephaestus and JMC, respectively) come to mind. Should they - or others I've forgotten - be on the list? If so, where?
And is Don Antonio richer than The Jason?
(Note that the Stellvians, excepting Noah, are not super-rich. Much of Yayoi's seed money went to the Senshi back in the First Fen days, keeping them alive long enough to become a Major Faction; Sora's wealth was collectivized by the Soviets with her permission; Korhan's went up in multiple explosions; and so on. That doesn't mean they aren't wealthy enough to own private asteroids if they want, just that they aren't part of "the 1%.")
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
It's been pointed out that, collectively, the Grover's Corners folk have enough potential clout to seriously destabilize the Fenspace economy single(?)-handedly, should they care to (or should they just be careless about it). So they belong on the list somewhere.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Sylia Stingray (And specifically the Stingray identity) might be at the bottom end of that list.... a fact that irk's the face behind the mask quite a bit. Stingray Motor Engineering turns out a fair amount of cash, and the dollar-value of the business that's accumulated is quite high. And because I find the idea of a false identity managing to become richer than the actual person - despite that person not really trying to get rich through it and generally leaving the business to run itself, just a little bit funny. Would it count as irony?
It brings in more money than pretty much anything everyone else within the Knight Sabers is doing combined. And they can touch none of it, except the payments which the business was set up to launder... Attempting to actually release all of the money would result in it all going poof in a massive corporate fraud investigation... and hundreds of people going unemployed.
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Vulpine Fury is likely to be perceived as one, even if he/she is closer to the financial state Jim Henson was often in: desperately looking for the funds for the next movie or TV show to produce, etc.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
We're also forgetting the obvious....
The Convention Authority's representatives on Pluto.
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*rimshot*
The folks on the Seele Council are a bit iffy. The council definitely has big time money, but all of it is in a collective pool and not only do they have to agree on how to use by at least a 3/4 vote beyond a certain personal limit but a percentage of it (half, but they prefer more) is always required to be available to support the functions of the NERV Foundation.
Jeph Antilles and Nene Romanova of JMC certainly qualify as being among the wealthier of Fen, if only because you really can't do much in the outer system without dealing with JMC for some shipments... although they do tend to keep a low profile in terms of that, and they certainly don't run the business like anyone like Padraig would. Employee loyalty is near the top of the charts among Fenspace companies, mostly because of Jeph's "you're on my crew, why are you still worried" philosophy, which transcends any power conveyed by mere wealth.
Myk-El Miller isn't badly off, but he tends to focus in the direction of providing training, and is only really part of JMC management "on paper".
None of them really qualify in terms of "in the 1%", in part because they do treat employees as a valuable resource, so a goodly portion of the company profits wind up in the pockets of the employees, or at least shows in the lavish benefits.
--
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
Dakota is well off, I've never sat down to figure out how much so. Steady income from walk-in business at Holo Neon, but most his money comes from much rarer and less steady contract work. I'd consider Dakota to be one of the stealth well-to-dos. Not many are aware of how much money he actually has at any given time.
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Characters
Sabre Fang
Dakota
Catgirl Industries is definitely NOT accumulating lots of money... they like to trade service for service and spend most of their resources on their quest to expand their stations and become (in theory) self sufficient.
Doctor Drakken is having far too much fun to worry about stockpiling any more money than what he needs to build and maintain his Grasping Hand Fortress of Spaghetti Space Opera, his reign of professional entertainment villainy, his costuming empire, and the odd Mad gadgeteering. Also, he's a bibliophile with the super villainous--his one actual bit of villainy--intent of freeing Fenspace from von Däniken-esque claptrap by buying up & entombing as much New Age & Old Age nonsense as he can get his blueberry hands upon. This is an expensive venture requiring many book dealers and a good deal of vault space as he can't bring himself to destroy even the most ridiculous or horrific of books. He keeps the best examples of each in the von Däniken section of his library (Each section is marked by a ersatz marble bust of a paragon of the subject.) : notable books within this section include a first edition signed hardbound edition of Chariots of the Gods, and the collected alien abduction works of Whitley Strieber. The dark gem of his collection is an 1487 original edition of the Kramer & Sprenger run of The Malleus Maleficarum. This...hobby costs Drakken more than a few talents.
Ergo, he'll never be the Croesus of Fensapce : money's the means, not the end.
The Neihardt clan is definitely somewhere in the Top 100... almost certainly the Top 50... probably not the Top 10, though.
Jenny Lambretta, Marsden's successor as CEO of Rockhounds Inc, is also up there.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.