Well, on the bright side most democracies are not explicitly about profit-making and/or cost-cutting as their first priority, even if it's the first priority of individual politicians.

I would agree with your statement that most western governments are not explicitly motivated by cost cutting and profit seeking. It would seem evident when we look at the trajectory of the US national debt in the past 40 or so years. However, I do not know if this is a good or bad thing. Will the national debt ever be paid off? And if not, what will the consequences be?

A nation paying its debt would actually not be as beneficial as you think, considering today's society runs on debt, having it is actually beneficial to an extent for relations, trade, to avoid war etc.

Now whether things should be this way am not sure, but a nation simply paying its debt off without significant changes to the role debt plays is not the answer.

The U.S. being the major exception?

Is it only western democracies that you think have been centralizing power? What about countries like China, Iran and Russia?

Western democracies historically have been party to increasing the power of private companies through government protection from competition (corporate welfare). The first example that popped in my head was the provision of prison labor for U.S. Steel through convict leasing.

There are numerous examples though, link below from Mises (admittedly a source with a conservative bias, but theres still good info there).

https://mises.org/wire/government-created-monopolies-are-eve...

It would seem to me that governments provide preferential treatment to private companies when it is beneficial for the government and they provide roadblocks and difficulties to companies who would be detrimental to the government. This is of course a generalization and not a hard-and-fast rule that explains every instance of government behavior when viewed in respect to a private company.

It was in response to the comment above - of course autocracies are constantly trying to increase their power.