Unfortunately, imo this is one issue masquerading as another: the real barrier to much of the US' societal progress is that we're an incredibly low trust society.

When you talk to e.g. Republicans about policies like universal healthcare or mass transit, what you realize is that they're not opposed to the policies themselves, they're just convinced that it will benefit others more than themselves. A lot of people chock that up as them being hateful (which is an easy and sometimes true explanation, as right-wing politicians and media stoke this to capture them as voters), but the core of the problem is that they are often convinced that any system structured like this will be denied to them when they try to access it (and if you've been obtaining medical care via patient-hostile private insurance your entire, it's probably hard to imagine otherwise).

And it sucks because this low-trust social system ruins things even in low-level shitty ways, like people cutting in line, or destroying free neighborhood food pantries or libraries, or driving like assholes.

"Someone else will exploit it if I don't" is both a justification used by some people for their own shitty behavior, AND something that turns people against anything not being forcibly controlled or structured to prevent that exploitation (I.e. anything communal or democratized). This is why the myth of the "welfare queen" was so easy for Fox to sell.

Authoritarianism also heavily degrades societal trust, though it's certainly not the only thing that does this. Capitalism does as well, because it offers the same incentives to exploit (the aforementioned "do it or have it be done to you").

They're both systems that live and die on the Prisoner's Dilemma.