Lobbying is surprisingly cheap. We should probably pay our politicians way more, uncomfortable as that sounds to many.
Elections are basically a mixture of corruption-fest to curry favors and a popular contest and the skills needed to get elected have almost nothing to do with the skills needed to do the job. Just get a random but large enough sample of the populace.
- paid enough during not to care about the bribe
- paid enough after not to care about loosing the next election
Lobbying is legal though. I am not sure if thats case because we want politicians to make money.
As far as I know, commonly lobbying means funding the whole party instead of an individual person. Also, lobbyists are usually required to register somewhere, which seems to be mainly a ceremonial thing. Until now, having looked up on that quite a few times, I haven't spotted a to-the-point summary of what's really the separating line other than these two points.
[1]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/01/2021-18...