One of the things that’s going to stay with me til I die was reading the Shadowrun backstory to corporate sovereignty

(during some one-off urban crisis involving food riots a mob attacked a megacorp trailer truck they thought might have supplies but actually carried infectious medical waste [possibly from an AIDS-analogue, that woulda been a theme at the time], the corp security defended with deadly force and when the city government answerable to those mobs tried to prosecute them for it the Supreme Court used that hard case to make bad law and immunize them, this metastisized)

and in the end it’s like “but the megacorps left the remnant nations in place to take care of petty shit, like who really wants to be in charge of garbage collection?!?”

and I nodded sagely to this at age like 14, and then years later was like THE MAFIA. THE MAFIA WANTS TO BE IN CHARGE OF GARBAGE COLLECTION, THE NEW YORK AND SEVERAL ITALIAN MAFIAS HAVE ATTAINED GREAT POWER BY CONTROLLING THAT NECESSARY BOTTLENECK