transmission (below) and politics

More on the transmission idea, posted below:

This concept applies also to politics and globalization. Think of a state as an enclosed system sustained by the will of a particular people, and consider the transnational nature of globalized capitalism. The state's policies in this sense stand between the destructive forces of the market and individual human beings: it either exposes them or protects them. The state moderates the power of the market like a transmission does.

What's interesting is the very different policies that states have towards globalization, if one considers that these policies at some point are an expression of the people's will. Americans, for example, are extremely exposed and vulnerable to the forces of the market. Europeans, on the other hand are less so: this is in fact what the debate over the EU Constitution was all about. Given this contrast, it begs the question as to why Americans allow themselves to be exposed and vulnerable to the marketplace, when other people in other states do not. Americans for example work longer weeks, take fewer vacations, and have fewer benefits than the citizens of almost any other industrialized country. Why is this, when they could definitely have otherwise? I find this baffling and troubling.