I no longer wonder about such things. The simple fact of the matter is that the system is designed to work against wage earners. It focuses on the benefit of our corporate overlords.
For example, I use to work for a company as a wage earner. I left, moving my 401k into a self-directed IRA. Since the market has been bad lately, I remained in cash. I want to put that money somewhere else: property.
I would love to buy a building downtown (which is theoretically possible). I would convert the top floor, about 5k sq/ft, into a co-work office that charges $10/day. The first floor I would rent out to someone, like a grocer. Sadly, the system works against this dream.
First, I can't use the building directly if I purchased it with the IRA. I, as the IRA holder, cannot utilize any properties within the account directly. There goes the co-work. I can't put sweat equity in because that is an illegal contribution. There goes fixing the building without loosing money on labor. I can't directly take the checks and deposit them in the IRA. The law requires that all checks go directly to IRA holding company (who will take a percentage). Finally, I have to get a special IRA account that holds property. Trick is that there is almost no one that does that since they don't make a lot of money. The few that do, take a big chunk.
So I, as a lowly wage earner, can't tap my largest asset directly. I can only use my money to feed the pockets of others via stocks and bonds.
As the Simpson's sung, "It's the American way!"