Used to be called a free press, until we allowed massive mergers creating single companies with control of a massive media market share, and journalism trade unions to be eliminated, leaving journalists no choice but to cover what they're told.
Despite the mergers, there are still news outlets that produce accurate and in depth reporting, and of course it's possible to consume news from multiple opposing sources, but most people either don't care about the news or only care if it gives them a reason to hate the other side.
By contrast, ad based news gets most of it's revenue from vitality, shares, and clicks. They create hyperbolic headlines aimed to create an emotional response (usually highly negative) in order to induce people to click in a rage.
"Where do rich people hide their wealth in the West?"
"In tax havens."
"And where do they hide it in Eastern Europe?"
"In plain sight".
A free press won't do squat if there is no consequence for the behavior they expose. If neither the public nor the courts punish such behavior having a free press cover it will amount to very little.
That is a lot. Look at the competitive landscape in other industries. There are basically 4 tire companies, 4 or 5 home builders, 6 or so mobile handset manufacturers, 4 or 5 US based airlines... You get the picture. And all of those industries are still decently competitive.
(American here, so I don't know. But the idea seems insane to me.)
In other words, the mechanism by which lobbyists get their way is by weaponizing regular citizens into voting in their interests. It's marketing and mass manipulation rather than the "quid pro quo" corruption people imagine it is.
I think Lessig's talk is the best summary of this: https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...
Lobbying itself is fine - we want experts with deep domain expertise interacting with law makers. We just don't want them also funding their campaigns.
It’s a sobering realization that none of our elected legislators are competent to actually write laws. Occasionally you’ll see an example where they’ll have a staff attorney draft something for the purpose of political grandstanding, but that’s a sideshow compared to the amount of legislation written by the people with the real power.
The dynamic of how the sausage is made in DC is why, incidentally, Trump had to go. For all his many many faults, one thing he did right was bring buying legal privilege in the form of laws or federal regulations to a grinding halt.
Even if they wanted to, they couldn't. Their staff offices don't have the payroll budgets to pay a decent analyst a living wage so their offices are staffed by the rich children of donors who can afford to be paid a pittance while living in one of the highest cost-of-living metros in the country. Smart legislative analysts are expensive, but none of them can afford to pay off student loans and raise a family at the payscales available to them. So they end up going into advocacy, big law, or lobbying once they cut their teeth on the Hill.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessm...
Also fundraising, public communications, and case-work are all bigger determinants of them getting reelected than legislative acumen or policy-making skill so big surprise what kinds of people the job selects for.
Philosophically opposed, whatever that means, is an obvious fig leaf. The system observably can’t actually be functioning as advertised. Whatever the conditions of the actual operationally descriptive system are, they select for people who vote as they’re told in exchange for a minuscule fraction of the loot.
Which means there is a problem even if the money never even touches a politician's / campaign's bank account. It's too easy for a politician to say something like "If elected, I will remove burdensome regulations on airlines" as a dog whistle for "I want the airline industry to buy ads that attack my opponent".
The only obvious ways to prevent that are to somehow prove that the politician coordinated their position with the industry (which seems impossible) or banning companies from ever expressing a political opinion (which apparently some politicians would like to achieve, but only those political opinions that they disagree with).
Fortunately there does exist one slightly less obvious way of preventing this, which doesn't require nullifying all the freedom of speech principles of the First Amendment. What is needed is a law (and probably an enabling Amendment) which limits political advertisements to N dollars per person per year (with N being 1% of the median US income).
Importantly, other forms of political speech and expression wouldn't be restricted. This way the law is targeted at the specific loophole that lobbying exploits, which is that people can be bombarded with a message against their wishes, generating an "illusory truth effect". People can still go out and find information, or march in the street to spread awareness of a political cause, but having more money wouldn't give you a greater ability to get your message in front of people who aren't interested in it.
The idea above is basically the core of CFR28 which is explained more in the relevant Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the...
But even though they outnumber the "big industry" lobbys they just don't have the money, connections, or influence.
Usually, the "problem" they exist to solve is that some government functionary wants to look like they're "doing something", which is itself a form of corruption. Regulations also commonly serve ideologically-motivated belief that some faction has managed to force on everyone else. Everything else that is "corrupt" about proscriptive regulations follows from the fact that the belief in proscriptive regulations is a corrupt belief (and illegal under the US Constitution as it was actually written).
These are the types of regulations that can change on a moments notice, and that the American citizen has no knob to turn to influence once the paper to establish the Agency in question is inked.
Executive lawmaking was never supposed to be a thing.
I tend to disagree. Most regulations address some problem, and in fact, the rules around changing regulations are strict enough that most of Trump's appointees' attempts to do away with regulations were ultimately reversed by the courts.
Sometimes, the problem no longer applies. But, I don't just want to disagree. So I'll tell you what. Throw 3 or 4 regulations out there you think are insane, and we'll see if I can explain a real problem for at least 1. I'd bet I could with a single regulation chosen at random, but your choices will be anything but random.
> serve ideologically-motivated belief that some faction has managed to force on everyone else
This one is true. Like, I believe murder is wrong and want it to be outlawed. But there are tons of other beliefs - e.g. rich people should a higher percentage of their income - that are ideological as well as pragmatic.
Governments are a service that people buy, which we have collectively voted on, agreeing that there are things that a purely corporation driven society would not do.
It is a fundamental attribute of power that it corrupts, and any agency with the power to decide what is corrupt and enforce against other agencies /government bodies their idea of corruption - is pretty much all powerful no?