Edit: To be clear, this was not a unique situation. A lot of businesses generally got sweetheart rates from street gangs and mobs because they helped the mob and mob bosses in other ways. The same way Wall Street financiers get a sweetheart deal because they manage the politicians' money and employ their children.
What a ridiculous comparison
* Edit since I'm spent on replies : Sure you can name that one favela somewhere where a few dozen were beheaded by the mob. The idea isn't that you'll win 100% of the time, the idea is you have some chance. I raise your one unnamed favela with several unnamed Mexican pueblos where cartel was run out by campesinos w/ break-action shotguns and rifles. And the mere fact you actually have a chance at winning is often enough to get a counterparty to back off.
Go try this in the favela near me and report back. The last group of locals that tried that were beheaded.
I'm beginning to think there's a time limit on relatively fair and effective states, as citizens slowly begin to become almost unbelievably blind to what actual criminal states are like and start dismantling their own institutions.
In no way has the federal government been 'dismantled' as time goes on. Although arguably the constitution has been dismantled, in no small part through ever expanding interpretation of the commerce clause.
If you lose your dead, that's not the case in a democracy