> Who decides which industry should be kept alive and which should die? Let me guess, you do.

Sometimes that's better than letting "the market" decide.

IMHO, it's a mistake to think of the market as some kind of best-decision making machine that should be left to run unattended. It's a effective, but buggy program with a lot of WONTFIX bugs that need to be mitigated through other means.

> Let me guess, you do.

Close. It's decided democratically, via elections of representatives who in turn vote on such issues. This system has it own problems, of course.

Aren't those same people now voting directly, with their wallets, to let an industry die? Why do you want to add a middleman politician to the process? Do people not know what's good for them? Why would they then know what's good for them when voting for those politicians?