IMO you need to put into different perspective. IRL we live on planet and we have private military organizations with more firepower than some nations, terrorist groups with tanks and armed vehicles. FL is set in a far future, aprox. 2000 years from now, with interstellar nations, planet-cities, billions and billions of people. A "Motley assortment of criminals" in this scale can mean more people than any nation have now. The infocards in vanilla were meant to be a guideline for player imagination. Of course some were poorly written, like the Manhattan one, stating that the planet have 20 million inhabitants, but still. when you put the universe of Freelancer into proper perspective it makes some sense.
![[Image: uzdlytw.png]](http://i.imgur.com/uzdlytw.png)