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comment by jaggs

Hmm...I would suggest that Esso and AT&T were (are?) essentially stateless in the same way. Any corporation of sufficient size has the capacity to overcome government regulation at some point surely? The difference now to then maybe that today's entities have a much more effective global reach due to the massive enhancement of communications, but I don't think we should ignore the fact that the big oil companies used to (still?) routinely overthrow governments which were in the way of (their) progress?