#1 Make lobbying completely illegal with serious punishment.
#2 All politicians must agree to to have bank accounts and net worth constantly monitored.
Then healthcare and a lot of other shit would prob start working out well.
Ok. So I'm going to explain why you're wrong. I'm going to start with point #2 since it's the more simple of the two: You can't expect politicians who don't enjoy freedom to create laws that keep us a free people; when the system itself is designed around and involved inrestricting freedom, the laws are going to reflect that. It puts our ultimate "faith"(the path we take when we're serious) in constant monitoring rather that freedom and nearly any other base our civilization was found on. It's crap.
For point #1 I'm going to explain why lobbyists are necessary. And I'm going to do it with Acai Berries.
So once upon a time Acai Berries were easy as piss to run, so a lot of people ran them. Competition escalated to the point where it was pretty fierce; and whoever had something original(and generally more shady) were the ones truly kicking ass. This is upsells. This is increased monthly fees. The use of Oprah. The obviously copied landing pages of photoshopped girls who changed names every flog.
Regulation was quite obviously going to come. And sure enough, the FTC dove in headfirst with their updated guidelines for Testimonials and whanot.
So this is how democracy works; people get pissed, the government reacts. Now, here's where the bullshit comes in:
Worked into the act is something that says the commercial/page/whatever has to include the "average" results.
This is impossible. even people with identical lifestyles don't lose weight or anything else at the same rate. Not even close. Add in the fact that people have drastically different lifestyles, and it becomes completely-mother-fucking impossible to have an average.
In addition, the legislation really bites off the head of a true innovation in internet advertising...our version of the infomercial. It's debatable what had to be done there, but the fact is that it weakens many less shady emerging ideas (getting a product to test out for free to build buzz for example), and additionally puts restrictions on us not generally present on television. We have a lot more emphasis on how much attention has to be drawn to disclaimers, etc (if you want to be strictly FTC compliant). So it's taking swings at a young industry that was one of very few to produce a profit in the economy. Oh yeah, and it's quite international. So the practice will likely continue, just with money going offshore.
So
this is why lobbyists are needed. The politicians are obligated to serve the people. No matter what they do, they have to get re-elected. But when something needs to be reigned in so it doesn't put undue restrictions (that will be ignored internationally), the lobbyists serve as the voice of the business interests (who employ a lot of the voters by the way) to make sure the industry gets treated fairly at least.
Keep in mind overregulation also serves to kill the low barrier for entry of any business (legal advice is expensive)
So summarizing:
So businesses with absolutely
no control will abuse humans. So they must be reigned at some point before it becomes a race to the bottom.
But at the same time: people are stupid, and won't read the bolded price above the "order button". We can't expect them(the consumer) to be able to not run businesses into the ground.
Which is where lobbyists step in.
And that mother fucker, is how a capitalist democracy works.
