The rise and rise of giant oil and tech companies, with their campaign contributions, commercial lobbying, predictive data harvesting and surveillance capitalism, has lent a certain urgency to old questions: How are we to cope with the power and perils of multinational corporations and how can a nation-state protect itself and its citizens from corporate excess?

As the international sub-prime bubble and bank collapses of 2007-09 demonstrated, just as corporations can enrich and positively shape the destiny of nations, so they can also drag down their economies. The United States Federal Reserve's bank bailout has been estimated to be US$7.77 trillion (S$10.74 trillion). The collapse of all three of Iceland's major privately owned commercial banks brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy.