The political world in Snow Crash resembles that of an organized anarchy. We only get a real sense of what the governmental situation in America is like, but we know that the federal government completely collapsed. The American dollar experienced hyper inflation similar to that of Germany in the early 1920's, to the point of where trillion dollar bills were almost worthless. The role of the federal government has been reduced to the equivalent of an overly proud company that thinks it is way more important than it is.

The political system that arises resembles organized anarchy, for there is no true law, no inalienable rights, no justice system to protect a newborn child. However there are rules and protection services offered through the individual franchulates. This system of franchises combines with the free anarchy left with the disappearance to form a very capitalism rooted form of anarchy. The different franchulates actually compete and advertise, whether in the real world or the metaverse, for citizens to come join. Different franchulates carve out specific niches for their customers, such as the New South Africa franchise which offers genetic purity for the stereotypical southern white male. Company wars manifest themselves in actual gang wars, such as the war depicted between the mafia owned Nova Sicilia and Narcolombia franchises. This system, just like economic capitalism, leads to large powerful franchises such as Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, and much smaller specialized franchises such and CosaNostra Pizza.

An interesting parallel to the Anarchy system in the continental United States is found on the raft. One quote in particular shows this on page 387: "The worst thing that can happen on the Raft is for your neighborhood to get cut loose. That's why the raft is such a tangled mess. Each neighborhood is afraid that the neighboring 'hoods are going to gang up on them, cut them loose, leave them to starve in the middle of the Pacific. So they are constantly finding new ways to tie themselves into each other..." the raft mirrors anarchy in that there again is no law or inherent rights obtained just by being a part of the raft. It is a cutthroat, free-for-all society in which any member could get screwed over and not be able to do anything about it.