Comment by ryandrake

If you want to understand the USA or figure out why something here is the way it is, the answer is usually "because it lets corporations extract the most money out of regular people." Everything, from seemingly odd little cultural quirks to enormous institutions like how we do health care, systems that were deliberately designed and things that emerged organically: everything is the way it is because it optimizes wealth transfer from ordinary people to corporations. That's usually the most straightforward explanation.