We are already in that situation, but we have several intermediaries (media ownership, lobbying) to pretend that we do not.
At any rate, "futarchy" is clearly a step backwards.
If they could not then there would not be a lobby, and media would not be as politicized as they are.
That's why many countries forbid lobbying entirely (not that that's 100% effective, but it's a start).
> What if improving society was a reward-in-itself and we trusted competent managers to do the complicated bits?
This is the mental model many citizen seem to adopt to interpret their government. In my opinion it's closer to a religion than reality. People that willingly reject great personal rewards in favor of the common good are a rarity. They do exist, but expecting people in power to naturally adopt that stance, or expecting that elections is a good way of finding those people, is a mistake.
I completely disagree. Not all value is as fungible as money, because economic value is rooted in the diverse & time-sensitive needs of individuals and societies.
My demand for "potable water-value today" is not freely exchangeable, via a universal value medium such as money, with your demand for "quiet sleepy-time value next week", even though these are things we are economically acquiring. Regulations are required to prevent uncontrolled financialization from cannibalizing society.
The free market has its practical uses, but allocating basic human rights is not one of them.
And in reality, people usually are willing to steal for things when they are desperate for them (which markets may or may not price in thru higher prices) before they are just willing to die.
> How is that a reasonable outcome in any functioning society?
I think the issue here is that I don't think we as people can all agree as to what is reasonable, or what "functioning society" actually means, though we are much better at coming up in aggregate with states that are possible in a given society (despite how unlikely some of those states are). In this, society is comprised of a combination of more or less likely "reasonable" and "unreasonable" states.
There's no such law, of course, but there's also no law that a restaurant must offer food and service that customers like, and yet we tend to observe that restaurants which do that tend to survive better than those which do not.