This is a meme I see and don't fully understand. It seems to assume that the state isn't a democracy, yet the statement is usually applied to democracies like the US. Such statements don't make sense to me when it's the people who are the state, not some "other".

The public have no effect on public policy in the US: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595

This is a classic principal-agent problem. The people are not the state in electoral/representative democracies, they merely elect agents that have their own beliefs and motivations.

The individual needs and the “needs of the state” are two very distinct things.