Comment by rayiner
The Tik Tok divestment law was passed by overwhelmingly by both houses of the duly elected Congress. At the time, a majority of Americans polled supported the law, while a minority opposed it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/more-support-than-oppose-tik....
In a democracy, this is how "society decides" what's in the "public good." This is not a case where legislators are going behind the public's back, hiding something they know they public would oppose. Proponents of the law have been clear in public about what the law would do and what the motivations for the law are. There is nothing closer to "society decides" than Congress overwhelmingly passing a law after making a public case for what the law would do.
Yes, they're doing it for "ideological and geopolitical reasons"--but those things are important to society! Americans are perfectly within their rights to enact legislation, through their duly elected representatives, simply on the basis of "fuck China."
This may in some ways be technically correct, but it is also true that in a democracy, the elite make decisions with the support of the people through manufactured consent. This process involves the manipulation of the populace through mass media, to intentionally misinform and influence them.
One could take the position that this process is so flawed as to be illegitimate. In this case it would be a valid position to believe that society had not fairly decided these things, and they were instead decided by a certain class of people and pushed on to the rest of us.
See: A Propaganda Model, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky: https://chomsky.info/consent01/