It's still wrapped in religious justifications. They just use 'freedom' and 'the invisible hand' as abstractions instead of some old guy with a beard and a bad temper.

ARGeezer:

Regardless of the ideological justification, that behavior is the one at least 80% of the people expect, based on long experience.

And yet - for a short while at least, we had something which looked like a participatory democracy. Up to a point.

That's still there as an ideal, and it's not going to go away.

Humans are truly wretchedly limited when it comes to political strategy, and it's easy for the amoral and immoral to prey on that.

But education can shift that. Even if royalty is replaced by trashy celebrity, and everyone gets their fifteen minutes, that's still an improvement on total war, total top-down control, and total bankruptcy.