It's the second thing. Americans are proud to pay for things they can afford. They look down on people who aren't paying their "fair share." For example, music and movie piracy was never the domain of the average consumer; it's mostly been for broke young people and enthusiasts who don't like DRM and the limits it puts on use. And part of the reason for that is that Spotify and Netflix et al. made it possible to continue consuming "respectably". If physical media were still the norm, piracy would be rampant, but not because Americans tend towards it naturally; bevause they would have been pushed toward it by the imperative consume wedded with the inability to pay.
A lot of dumb "just so" tales in economics are willful miscategorization of desperation as choice.
> It's where people pay me their excess money and get nothing in return, increasing their desperation
Wait, isn't that called 'campaign finance'?
The problem with competing with entrenched market interests is they can use their economic advantages to make the market impossible for newcomers to enter leading to de facto monopolies.
A lot of dumb "just so" tales in economics are willful miscategorization of desperation as choice.