The idea is that big business both desires and benefits from an environment of total laissez faire, of cutthroat competition free from the control of meddlesome regulators.

The problem is that from a historical perspective, this story is complete nonsense. Established firms have consistently looked to government for protections, subsidies, and other special benefits in order to escape the unpredictability and risks of competition.

Today, we call this kind of intervention on behalf of big business "corporate welfare." The phrase and the idea itself are unique to the modern era and its politics, the system of the nation-state, and the historically novel idea that there is — or ought to be — a clean separation of the public and private sectors. No such idea could have been possible before the modern era, for the right of the rich to rule in the political realm was treated quite unconsciously as perfectly natural and legitimate.