One of the great acts of human creativity has been to convince the masses that if you install a bunch of middlemen who are looking to profit, goods and services will be cheaper and better.
I think part of the success of this message is that it’s so obviously silly that people feel silly questioning it.
if you factor in how private industry exploits negative externalities, the mystically infallible free market is quite bad. a great example is people saying nuclear energy doesn't make sense and never will when compared to fossil fuel burning energy production, but that's entirely ignoring the million+ people who die every year from illnesses directly attributable to pollution from fossil fuel energy. and the whole irreversibly killing the planet thing.
They absolutely are zealots; the zealotry focuses on profit.
Why these types of stories are so jarring to some is that they serve as a reminder that your pet technology or project will get fed into the wood chipper if enough bloodless “Ex-Bain, Ex-Mercer, I Love LinkedIn” types tell the ceo it’s a profitable idea. And you and I are just as expendable.
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