Comment by xxpor
2 hours ago
is money the problem or just that most people don't care about most things, but a few people REALLY care about a few things? There's plenty of groups without much money that still gum up the works because they're persistent.
This is a basic concept of Public Choice Theory.
People worrying about money in politics are overemphasizing the instrumentality of money, rather than the underlying structural incentives that tend toward special interests dominating complex issues.
If money were removed from the equation, the concentrations of power, motivations to influence it, and asymmetries in those motivations will all continue to exist; political influence will just be exercised through other means, and some particular faction or class of people will still be at the sweet spot of having the greatest competence and the greatest motivation to apply those means.
A lot of people are reluctant to acknowledge it, but this is inherent to politics itself, and there is no straightforward way to fix it, other than to limit the reach of political power.