Your perspective makes sense if you accept as good that massive political effort must be taken to do obviously good things against the wishes of special interest groups. But most people would think that the US Mint churning out worthless coins every year at the expense of citizens is an undesirable state of affairs. Wasting other people’s money is inherently despicable.

Not that worthless coins are anywhere near the top of the list of bad and wasteful policies. But if we can’t even solve the obvious low-hanging fruit, we’re not solving those bigger problems either.