[nybble41]

"Lobbying" just means presenting your position on an issue. Money can help with making a persuasive presentation, to a point, but lobbying per se is never the cause of the problem. You can blame that on the people with way too much power who listen to the lobbyists and do as they ask—instead of actually doing their jobs and representing the interests of all their constituents.

[pessimizer]

This is an extremely linear way of looking at public corruption.

It's all well and good to say that politicians should act morally, but if you don't do what you're told, you won't get the money, and you won't keep the job. You'll be replaced by somebody who does what they're told. We're filtering for trash.

It's weird that you're even combining this with a defense of cash payments to politicians from special interests. You characterize bad governance strictly as a moral failure, but defend bribes as an mostly irrelevant rhetorical addition to the persuasive presentation of one's position.

[nybble41]

> … if you don't do what you're told … you won't keep the job.

Whether you keep your job is determined by who your constituents vote for, not by lobbyists. Perhaps voters are sometimes too easily swayed by campaign spending, but that's a separate issue from lobbying.

> It's weird that you're even combining this with a defense of cash payments to politicians from special interests.

You misread. Spending more on your presentation can make it more persuasive because (up to a point, as I said) the end result is better researched and more polished in general compared to what can be produced on a shoestring budget. I was not suggesting that lobbyists ought to bolster their arguments with cash payments to politicians. Frankly I don't really care whether bribes are exchanged so long as the end result serves the constituents as a whole and not just the lobbyists. Accepting a bribe to advance lobbyists' interests at the expense of one's constituents would be an obvious example of corruption. As would doing the same out of personal preference without any exchange of favors.