It's more like a hideous symbiosis. "they" Play this trick on us and possibly themselves, equating me personally with the masses and deriving legitimacy from mass deception. We live among those that believe the lies. Even if we don't believe them, we are in the thick of it, and must somewhat cooperate for satisfying our own human needs like food, shelter, and, most cruelly, companionship. In fact, you can live pretty decently if you're of the right mindset.

Free markets, as a model, are realistic and optimizing. But the results are not good because the agents in the system do not force it to behave well. Game theory makes it suboptimal for individual agents to create a globally better situation. Of course, there's those that say market segmentation is a good thing. But I personally believe it's "bad" to have a DIP-switch on the inside of a microwave switch it between 600 watts and 800 watts, so we can sell the 800 watts one at a higher price, when in fact everyone could have an 800 watts microwave for the same cost to society. And then there's the cost of inventing everything twice, just so the competition doesn't have it. The saddest part is that it's been working rather well, because apparently humans work well under such conditions.

And then there's Juan, who's upset about something, but nobody really knows what it is, or what's he's trying to do about it.