Not the final straw, but the first thing that shook me out of “capitalism is great and leads to the best outcomes thinking”… in the span of a couple weeks, I took a flight on Frontier Airlines and a train ride on Amtrak.

If you’re not familiar with Frontier… it’s one of the airlines that has “cheap” tickets but they get you on a lot of small charges. Flight was miserable, mainly because the flight attendants were kinda pushy about selling beverages and snacks. And more than once, they got on the PA and you were forced to listen to their sales pitch for the Frontier credit card. All around miserable experience.

Then shortly after I took my first trip on Amtrak - the US’ government supported train network. People always shit on it but it was actually kinda nice. Affordable ticket, comfortable easy to get on/off compared to flying. There wasn’t a bunch of ads plastered inside the cabin. Overall a very nice experience.

It seems small but up to then I had a firm belief that the private sector always did things better than the public sector. Losing that helped shake other things loose later on.