These principles, culled from a once-extremist philosophy, were canonized as standard practice across commercial, financial, and legal domains. By 2000, US public corporations employed fewer than half as many Americans as they did in 1970.35 In 2009 there were only half as many public firms as in 1997. The public corporation had become “unnecessary for production, unsuited for stable employment and the provision of social welfare services, and incapable of proving a reliable long-term return on investment.”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 129