But that logic simply does not hold. Lots of subsidies and bailouts go swiftly to very specialized interests without such public grumblings. It's happened mult

But that logic simply does not hold. Lots of subsidies and bailouts go swiftly to very specialized interests without such public grumblings. It's happened multiple times in the past 15 years on the scale of trillions Parks, community college and library funding, which is public and ostensibly for everyone, are under far more scrutiny than say, the billions in subsidies to Amazon, which you probably didn't realize existed. Under your hypothesized system, free healthcare, preschool, generous maternity leave, free college, these would all be easy victories. They are not because of an ideology of hyperindividualism and a dogmatic commitment to an amorphous ideology called "the free market" which is seen as so sacrosanct and holy that some people get wobbly knees and raise an accusatory finger if someone has the gall to dare to question whether the current cowboy capitalism peddled under the label "free market" is actually a good idea. The insanity of fundamentalism has invisibly inserted itself into our daily life by Tartuffian free marketeers who suckle the public teet. The analysis of reality fails your proposed tests. The ones I've suggested map to reality more faithfully without any rationalizing or circuitous logic required. You can believe whatever you want. Some beliefs, however, are more accurate than others