Editing Snow Crash (section)

===Plot background===
In the 21st century, an unspecified number of years after a worldwide economic collapse, [[Los Angeles]] is no longer part of the United States since the [[federal government of the United States|federal government]] has ceded most of its power and territory to private organizations and [[entrepreneurship|entrepreneurs]].<ref>{{cite book |url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674003125 |title=Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America |date=9 September 1999 |access-date=10 April 2022 |first=Richard |last=Rorty|series=The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in American Studies |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=9780674003125 }}</ref> [[Franchising]], individual [[sovereignty]], and private vehicles reign supreme. [[Mercenary]] armies compete for national defense contracts, while private [[security guard]]s preserve the peace in sovereign [[Gated community|gated housing developments]].<ref name="snow-crash">{{cite book |last1=Stephenson |first1=Neal |title=Snow Crash |date=1992 |publisher=Bantam Books|location=New York |isbn=9780553898194 |edition=2003 paperback |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RMd3GpIFxcUC&pg=PA45}}</ref>{{rp|p=45}}  Highway companies compete to attract drivers to their roads,<ref name="snow-crash" />{{rp|p=7}} and all mail delivery is by hired courier.<ref name="snow-crash" />{{rp|p=306}} The remnants of government maintain authority only in isolated compounds, where they do tedious [[Make-work job|make-work]] that is, by and large, irrelevant to the society around them.<ref name="snow-crash" />{{rp|p=176}} Much of the world's territory has been carved up into sovereign enclaves known as Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities (FOQNEs),<ref name="snow-crash" />{{rp|p=14}} each run by its own [[big business]] franchise (such as "Mr.&nbsp;Lee's Greater Hong Kong", or the corporatized [[American Mafia]]), or various residential ''burbclaves'' (quasi-sovereign gated communities).  In this future, American institutions are far different from those in the actual United States at the time the book was published; for example, a for-profit organization, the CIC, has evolved from the [[CIA]]'s merger with the [[Library of Congress]].<ref name="snow-crash" />{{rp|p=22}}