It's invisible because it provides no true value to them.
Right now you and I are paying for some NSA hacker to compromise American telecom networks, 13 carrier battle groups to put around the ocean doing nothing, literal armies of people in a hundred plus bases on literally every continent that provide NEGATIVE value to your average person on the street, and so much more.
Your car has broken down and you can't afford to fix it, while the government has taken ten grand from you in the last 12 months that could have purchased you a new car. But it's ok, some overpaid bureaucrats are making real progress in abstract geopolitical interests in a country you can't even find on a map! It's a simple example, but people really underestimate how much more they'd have in their pocket if the government wasn't siphoning off cash at every step on the economic cycle. Look at the number of people struggling, and imagine how much we could relieve that by simply stealing less from them.
