A mere state can't restrain a corporation like Murdoch's

[CHIMO]

The deep corruption of power revealed by the phone-hacking scandal has led many to question how Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation could establish "a state within a state". MPs have trumpeted their determination to make sure it never happens again. They will struggle.

As if to rub the point in, BSkyB's board announced it was back to business as usual on Thursday. Despite parliament's question mark over the integrity of its chairman, James Murdoch, the rest of the board said they fully supported him. A few hours later the Guardian reported a new low in the saga – allegations that Sarah Payne's mother's phone may have been hacked. But the corporation marches on.

The fact is that the modern globalised corporation is not a state within a state so much as a power above and beyond the state. International development experts stopped talking about multinationals years ago, preferring instead the tag of transnational corporations (TNCs), because these companies now transcend national authorities.

Developing countries, dealing with corporations whose revenue often exceeds their own GDPs, have long been aware of their own lack of power. They are familiar with the way world trade rules have been written to benefit corporations and limit what any one country can impose on them. They know about the transnationals' tendency to oligopoly; and their ability to penetrate the heart of government with lobbying. For an affluent country like the UK, it has come as more of a shock.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/28/murdoch-news-corp-banks-transnationals

[villager]

1. only the withdrawal of economic participation with these entities will bring them down

of course if, in their greed, they crash the economies around them, this may happen anyway...