Part of the myth of the American identity is the extreme loathing of government. Somewhere in our history, government came to mean, specifically, the state. Private government, or the private sector, was positively not the government. The idea of private government, i.e. an institution that controls a large portion of our lives, has never been more important than it is now.

In "Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don't Talk About It)," Elizabeth Anderson discusses at length how the free market, as imagined by 18th and 19th century thinkers such as Adam Smith and Thomas Paine, was supposed to be a "levelling" force that gave more liberty to individuals. They imagined a society comprised mostly of people who worked for themselves, or companies that were quite small. Smith's famous pin factory in which he explained his theory of division of labor had 10 people and it was thought to be large. The massive corporations of today and the power they exert do not reflect that vision.