Talking About Private Government: A Review of the Economic Claims Made to Rebut Anderson’s Analysis

In Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It), Elizabeth Anderson argues that most people in the United States and other liberal societies spend their working lives under kind of autocratic rule we would normally associate with communist dictatorships. They are forced to work oppressive environments, deprived many freedoms, given practically no say over conditions. Even nonworking workers frequently subjected employer scrutiny sanction. And legal framework economic realities surrounding employment such exit is viable for only a small minority. Anderson’s has generated great interest and, along it, several criticisms take exception her observations, assumptions, conclusions. This paper delineates various claims made against Government so as facilitate further inquiry these issues.