Bašdõran

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A bašdõran (Tavari: family business, lit. family thing, plural bašdõrani) is a large conglomerate of businesses, usually across several economic sectors, controlled by a single individual or family in Tavaris and the countries that once formed part of its colonial holdings. Most are well integrated into the Tavari financial system, especially in banking, finance, and insurance, and nearly all are now international firms with operations and investments in countries across the Tavari Union and elsewhere around the world. Nearly all bašdõrani descend directly from the estates and business operations of the Tavari lines (a kind of clan) when their chiefdoms and formal legal standing were abolished in 1793. The former chiefs, who had essentially been Tavari nobility and tended to be vastly wealthy and well connected in business and society, more or less reincorporated the portfolios of investments, property, companies, and other wealth they had owned and operated in trust for their lines as private business operations for their own profit. The former chiefs could then use these businesses for patronage, using the promise of jobs or business contracts for leverage.

Because of their nature as "family" businesses and their legacy as descending from the institution of the chiefdoms, there has been a sort of unwritten code considered to bind the bašdõrani in their treatment of employees, especially ones who are "in the family"—i.e. in the line that owns the bašdõran, to whom the firm is generally expected to have an obligation to because the wealth of the business came from the line as a whole. Preferential hiring—even mandatory hiring—for members of the same line as the owning family was considered a norm in Tavaris until it was made illegal in the 1980s, which was considered a massive change at the time. Bašdõrani form some of the most visible day-to-day facets of the Tavari line system, as millions of Tavari people are employed by them.

Especially prior to a major series of ethics and regulatory reforms passed in the 1980s under Prime Minister Bežra Išdašt Tovrenar, bašdõrani in Tavaris were heavily associated with corruption and seen as methods to illicitly funnel wealth from both the government and unsuspecting customers into the owning family's pockets. The set of Tavari cultural norms and practices around bribes and kickbacks when doing business or providing any good or service, referred to as the "Tavari System", was endemic in both the private and public sectors for much of Tavari history up into the 1980s and continues to have lingering effects today. Since the reforms, most bašdõrani have largely agreed to conform their practices to the law, but small-scale violations are still common even if systemic corruption has decreased.

In Tavaris, while the continued dominance of the bašdõrani is politically controversial, the system is not without its proponents. The Liberal Party has historically been closely intertwined with the leadership of the various bašdõrani and, as such, quite favorable to business interests and in reducing government regulation on the conduct and structure of private enterprise. Liberal policies in the 2000s saw a wave of privatization that in many cases saw former state assets, such as Air Tavaris or most of the country’s power plants, transferred directly to bašdõran control and vastly enriching them. Supporters of the move argued that Tavaris’ exceptionally large, diversified, vertically-integrated conglomerates were uniquely suited to handle such large, critical national operations as the country’s power grid and flag carrier while being able to work more efficiently than the public sector. Proponents of the bašdõran system also often couch their support in cultural terms, describing the bašdõrani as “the Tavari way,” or that their legacy as descended from the line system not only grants them a special place in Tavari society but also serves as a moderating influence that encourages the firms to treat their employees well.

Labor union participation has historically been low in Tavaris due in large part to a strong social norm that those who work for a company their line "owns" commit a grave insult if they join a union, since they receive unspoken benefits as members of "the family." Additionally, opponents of unions in Tavaris argue that the unwritten codes governing the conflict of bašdõrani even protect non-"family" employees to the degree where unions are not necessary—that, along with arguments that employees would have to lose their historic privileges under a union labor contract, would seem to have successfully convinced workers at the overwhelming majority of bašdõran-owned companies to decline to unionize. In general, it tends to be felt that working for a "family" company means being reasonably sure of not being fired without good cause and getting "a fair share" of the company's profits, which historically and still today is often expressed in the form of a New Year's Bonus payment that, for many working- or middle-class Tavari families, often represented a significant portion of their annual earnings and often well exceeded any similar benefit offered by invariably less wealthy non-bašdõran companies. Tavari tend to trust that working for a bašdõran means being "treated like family" and being able to have a degree of informality with the employer that they could not elsewhere, which contributes to attitudes resisting changes to the system.

In Metradan, bašdõrani also form a major part of the economy, in many cases being the very same companies that operate in Tavaris. The close linkages in Metradani and Tavari businesses, which remained in place even as their governments diverged following Metradani independence in 1905, has played major roles in both the Metradani economy's continued dependencies on the Tavari economy and the political corruption still endemic in Metradan in a similar way to Tavaris prior to reforms. By virtue of their much more recent independence from Tavaris, Acronis, Elatana, and the Union Territories of the Avtovati Isles and Metrati Anar have similar economies to Tavaris, though Acronis has pledged to significantly curtail and weaken the bašrõdani and is widely expected to attempt to nationalize at least some portions of their economy. Greater Ilarís within the UFC and New Tavaris within Vakani Dalar also have significant bašdõran presence.

Rodoka stands in rather stark exception in the Tavari Union due to the Native Rodokan's legal autonomy under the Treaty of Sinajärv, which granted the Rodokans, among other rights, freedom to keep their own "separate treasury," which came to essentially operate as a bank and which eventually became quite wealthy and influential in regional commerce. The Rodokans strongly resisted encroachment by the Tavari bašdõrani into their local economy and also largely refused to adopt Tavari-style cultural norms like requiring bribes for transactions, meaning Rodokan port cities like Sinajärv represented some of the "cleanest" places to do business in Tavaris. No major ultra-wealthy Tavari family owns any significant business operations in Rodoka.

Racatrazi does not have any significant presence by the Tavari bašdõrani, but does have a similarly structured economy dominated by large conglomerated enterprises, closely held by small groups that, unlike Tavari bašdõrani, are not necessarily owned by people who are related by blood, and sometimes are not even structured as businesses at all. Often described as consisting of cartels or "crime rings," the economy of Racatrazi is dominated by organized crime, much of it involved in the international trade of illegal narcotics such as cocaine.

List of Bašdõrani

• Ranzalar Holdings, owned by Toran Nuvo Ranzalar, the richest person in Tavaris. It is among the newest of the bašdõrani, dating only to the 1960s. It owns Monata Automotive, the Tavari Union's largest auto manufacturer, and is also involved in palm oil, media, and mining.
• Tažnažan Nevrani, or Nevrani Court, owned by small group of members of Line Nevran known as the "Country Nevrans" (differentiating them from the "City Nevrans" who live in the city of Nakaš, a branch of the family currently de facto headed by Žarís Nevran Alandar.) The Country Nevrans, seated in the historic estate of the Chiefs of Nevran in what is now suburban Nakaš Province, are led by Vodri Nevran Toncosel, the Prime Minister's fourth cousin. Nevrani Court owns Air Tavaris and is heavily involved in mining, financial services (it owns AttaKõvošori, the country's third-largest commercial bank), manufacturing, and book publishing. It also owns a majority stake in the Nuvrenon News, Tavaris' largest newspaper by circulation, and the cable news channel Nuvrenon News Network. It is an example of a highly centralized bašdõran and one that still regularly, explicitly identifies itself as the continued existence of the household of a Chief.
• The Lanaš Group, owned by billionaire Otan Lanaš Bettõndra, is most famed for owning the third-largest television network in Tavaris, Bló, as well as Premier Rugby Tavaris, the country's third most popular sports league. However, it is highly diversified, involved particularly in the food and beverage industry (especially producing traditional Tavari rum and other spirits) but also in mining, manufacturing, financial services, and defense contracting (it is the largest shareholder in weapons manufacturer Zandria.) The Lanaš Group owns LGPower, the utility that purchased approximately half of the power generation plants in what was then Tavaris (now across the whole Tavari Union) when the grid was mostly privatized (except for one nuclear plant and a handful of small power plants on government-owned land) in 2003.
• AtnaNuvo, owned by the Atna family of Line Nuvo and initially formed from a large inheritance given under unusual circumstances from Queen Adra III years before her death to her first cousin, shortly after the Tavari Diet began to debate the bill that, in 1882, would force the monarch to give up all her independent assets. AtnaNuvo went bankrupt in 1983, a century after its formation, due to a massive legal settlement it was ordered to pay in relation to the deadliest building collapse in Tavari history, the 1981 Subittai SuperMall Collapse. At the time, it was the largest bašdõran in the country.
• The Rundra Company, owned by the descendants of the last Chief of Rundra, was the most powerful and most infamous of the bašdõrani based in the west of Tavaris, now Acronis. The Rundra Company was dissolved, and its component parts wither spun-off or bought out by competitors, after its bankruptcy in 1985. The company owned what had been the country's largest bank, Western Bank & Trust, and was also known for its music recording and media division, known as Rundra Records. The company collapsed after failing to see a return on massive investments it had made in ultimately failed home video formats.