[saltcured]

I think the government conspiracy fear works best for the audience who still has some belief in government. So it is a disturbing moral corruption of something they consider powerful and benign. Lots of people older than myself reported this feeling from the 60s and 70s as things like the Pentagon Papers came to light.

The corporate fear works if you assume either fascism (top-down collusion between the two), government incompetence/irrelevance (so corporate power is unchecked), or widespread government corruption (more bottom-up collusion).

So feelings on these themes may help indicate your worldview or the worldview of the audience and writers in different eras?