The zenith of the old service economy was the court of Louis XIV, where specialist courtiers attended to the Sun King’s every need, even the most intimate (there was a Groom of the King’s Close Stool). In that pre-modern world, private life was extraordinarily public, whereas the social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries dramatically expanded the realm of individual privacy and self-definition.
原有服务经济在路易十四宫廷时期达到顶峰，当时有专门的臣子满足太阳王包括最隐私需要在内的所有需求（有专门的仆人服侍国王如厕）。在当时的前现代世界，私人生活令人难以置信地公开化，而十九二十世纪的社会运动极大地拓展了个人隐私和自我定义的领域。