>
certain losers with a deeply entrenched lobbyExcellent point and phrasing! And it suggests what needs to be done to move things along: (a) make them not losers & (b) decrease the ability to entrench lobbying.
To (a), I don't think we do enough of directly buying out stakeholders. E.g. if we know moving to single-payer insurance would be beneficial to the system as a whole (we probably don't, but just an example), why not explicitly pay off private insurance companies, phased out over 10 years? Everyone would still win!
To (b), the key is the corruption of should-be-objective decisions. To me, regulatory-industry revolving doors are the most important, because they're the greatest source of invisible-at-the-time corruption (e.g. you sway a decision... 15 years later you get a cushy "retirement job" in industry). Fundamentally, I don't think there's a way you get around that, absent banning it (above a certain level of regulatory authority) and substituting equivalent economic compensation. Continuously finding selfless, competent people to staff regulatory services is not a sustainable model. So pay them so the "selfless" isn't a requirement (even if you have to tax industry more heavily to do so).