[bluerooibos]

I'm sure people (society) wants cheap food, free universal healthcare, free public transport, so why don't we have these things?

Under capitalism each of these individual systems needs to turn a profit to be deemed worthwhile instead of treating the system as a whole and taking into account the economic externalities and benefits to the entire system.

[logicchains]

>free universal healthcare, free public transport

There's no such thing as free things, there's just some people paying for other people's things, and surprise surprise some people don't want to use their hard earned money to pay for other people's transport and healthcare.

[pixl97]

And yet too much zero sum thinking leads to a crabs in a bucket mentality were the greedy get less by being greedy instead of having an educated productive society around them.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

> free universal healthcare, free public transpor

There are societies that voted for those things and have them. Many other (often more successful societies) react to those like "OMG commies are at it again".