Corporation

After the Martian Conflict, the role of the corporation - at least as it existed in the 21st century - was largely marginalized. Individual people could supply most of their needs, with food, power and raw materials being the only real needs, and much of the last was recycled anyway. Where the former century had moved in a libertarian direction, the 22nd added a potent socialist slant - not to equalize people, but simply because supplying basic needs was a trivial affair, giving rise to the content.

Only nine corporations survived the conflict, and have continued since the Diaspora. They are closer to guilds now than monolithic entities, performing various services and providing products, adhering to a loose set of rules to ply their trades. They produce and supply more difficult to acquire things such as heavy isotopes, mirror matter, hadronium, interstellar transport, and so on.

• Adamant was formed a bit after Prime was, making it truly the youngest. It is the trade arm of the Procyon Concord.
• Brook is one of the youngest, though it's not saying much. It began as a no-name company that slowly built an unusually large investment portfolio, effectively becoming a holding company.
• Cross was originally a massive Brazilian conglomerate (called 'Cruz' even still).
• General is notable for its size, and its rules are often used as a general template.
• Interstellar was originally research think tank and computing giant, and is believed to have unleashed the mobius patterns. It was the only one of these to be headquartered on Mars after the conflict.
• Keiretsu was Japan's answer to the formation of General.
• Prime received its start in Ouranos Prime, as the general organization to manage large-scale production affairs.
• Royal was a European (British) manufacturer.
• West was an Australian holdings conglomerate.

These organizations are technically gerens, but their purpose is not so much camaraderie but rather to impose a sort of interstellar order in economic situations. In this sense they function a lot like the Concord, though on a somewhat more personalized scale.