The 20th century defined government as an agent of change. Post-industrial, laissez-faire capitalism produced great wealth and achievement at the price of social dislocation, overcrowding, environmental pollution, and wrenching poverty[xvi] leading to reform through socialism[xvii] and government intervention in the form of regulation resulting in "big government". Across the globe, governments were quick to take over the provision of goods and services from the private sector monopolists in "the name of the people", committing whole industries to the implied equity of government-run industry. By the end of the century, the winds had changed direction yet again.
In the 1980s, as a backlash against the failures of socialism and "big government", many countries privatized state-owned enterprises either through selling them off or partnering with the private sector. In the United States, a growing reliance on the federal government to solve local problems[xviii] along with dwindling public funds and a shift in policy at the federal level pushed government to embrace the free market economy through the private sector.