[vidarh]

But while I'm sure some of them had that in mind, I think very of them went around thinking "how I vote on this specific piece of legislation will make a difference in how much I make afterwards".

The Clintons is a good example of why that would no sense: Their revenue is effectively diversified enough that it would make very little difference. They're trading off their perceived status and recognition - if they'd pushed policy in a different direction, their revenues would just have come from being popular as speakers etc. with different sets of people, it wouldn't have evaporated. It might have been different, and it is possible they'll have thought about that at times, but it is unlikely that they kept thinking "this will increase/lower our income later" because it's way too abstract how it would influence things.

Yes, I'm sure outright vote-buying happens, but I don't think most lobbying is outright vote buying. That doesn't mean it isn't wrong, but that trying to paint it as outright vote buying rather than paint it as wrong by making the point that disproportionate access is equally bad is counter-productive. Because if you accuse the average politician of outright selling their vote, they'll consider themselves unjustly victimized and just think you're a crank that's totally off the mark.

[blindwatchmaker]

I'm not overly concerned with hurting a politician's feelings. I am bemused at the idea that someone can observe the last few decades of the capture of the government and major political parties by corporate and oligarch interests and the increasingly lucrative payoffs to these people, and not come to the transparently obvious conclusion that these are commercial relationships.

This is institutionalized and legalized bribery, not just 'access' or 'networking' or whatever euphemism you want to use to couch this in niceties.

[vidarh]

Saying "these are commercial relationships" (that we should try to stop) is different from saying "people are outright buying specific votes".

The problem is that people are too often looking at this as if it is the latter, when it usually is the former. That doesn't mean it's not a problem, but it means that attempts to try to address the latter will be totally ineffective, and addressing the former is far harder in general, because the "payoff" can be very tangentially related and non-obvious.

E.g. it can be as tangential as "look at me giving money to this cause over here that I know that you like (wink, wink)". No direct exchange needs to happen. No direct benefit needs to be had then and there - just the acknowledgement that party X will be very grateful were you to listen more carefully to what they say (not even one on one with you, but say, in a committee, or even in PR releases) and understands your interests.

Direct bribes are "easy" to stop in comparison. And so they're the wrong focus. The consequence of shifting focus to more indirect influence is that the only viable solutions to stop this kind of influence is to disperse power of politicians more by weakening their individual influence, and to reduce the powers of potential beneficiaries of there decisions inherent in accumulation of capital. You draw the conclusions.

Politicians feelings doesn't come into it - nothing you try to do to stop this by regulating their interactions with business will have any real effect.