contract that people are forced to sign everyday because of vastly unequal bargaining power are an erosion against the free state of man. With unlimited private power, there would be nothing to prevent very exploitative labor practices akin to slavery. And before you say that the free market would not allow slavery, that assertion is denied by history.

I say this somewhat in jest because you did not respond to my question about public vs. private power.

And we are on different pages about the power of the state. You are 100% that the government has grown larger since the 1940s but that is irrelevant to our conversation.

If the problem is that people fight over government power, what is relevant to our conversation is the POTENTIAL for governmental power. It is the vast potential that makes the stakes so high. How that power has been exercised in the past is not that important because people enter politics for future outcomes.

And the potential for governmental power has not really changed since the 1940s. The powers of the federal government greatly expanded with commerce clause jurisprudence that ended in the 1940s. Since then, if anything, the potential for governmental power has been walked back. Individual freedoms are much more protected and the commerce clause power of the federal government (while still incredibly vast) has some limits now.