Our usual institutions let us pretend to be trying to get the thing we pretend to want, while actually under the surface giving us the things we actually want. Policy analysts typically analyze policy reforms that would give us more of the things we pretend to want and we are usually uninterested in that because we know we don't actually want more of the things we pretend to want. ... What we want to do is pay for the appearance of the thing we are pretending to want and we are often paying a lot for that appearance.