It's only been stealthy if you put your head in the sand Thinktanks and intellectuals like Buchanan have always been grifters who get paid to think and justify

It's only been stealthy if you put your head in the sand Thinktanks and intellectuals like Buchanan have always been grifters who get paid to think and justify a certain worldview that rich people want to make reality. Why is one of the foremost assumptions in mainstream economics the fact that the all actors are rational, and what does that imply about those that become wealthy? Why do so many free-market economists want to take as an axiom that every individual is attempting to maximize their own personal gain first? Because people who do think that way have the money to pay people like Buchanan to justify it. Any regular person who doesn't have a personal army of servants, sycophants, and paid-for intellectuals knows that those axioms taken a priori are bullshit. But to certain mega-rich people who think the only reason they have been so greatly rewarded with wealth is through some form of superiority, it makes perfect sense. The fact is that it's remarkably intoxicating of a thought to think that the reason you've been given so much power and influence is because you deserve it, because as a powerful person you have been awarded the resources (Buchanan's "Gravy Train") to convince other people of that fact as well