I find these types of articles invigorating and demoralizing at the same time. I think the reason why, and something I've thought about a lot lately, is: what would it actually take to do something like this? It'd probably involve a series of steps like this to do _exactly_ this:

* Decide to run for office

* Raise an enormous amount of money, somehow without indebting yourself to private interests

* Convince a large amount of people to vote you into office

* Bring to bear an enormous amount of political capital to convince other people to enact these changes

That involves no small amount of luck and personal charisma. I probably have none of these things, so that leaves me out.

There are other methods that are potentially easier (the one that comes to mind is effectively paying off an incumbent politician), but I'd roughly guess that there's only a 40-60% chance to get the outcome you want. Even easier actions, like calling your representatives, I'd peg at 2-5% expected value. Voting is <0.1%.

Are these really our only options? Am I thinking about this problem wrong? Is this just the great struggle of human governance we've been trying to solve for millenia?