I do not disagree that there is a lot of room for improvement, there always is.
My point was merely that people never recognize the positive things and keep on harping about the negatives until they come to the wrong conclusion that it's all negative and needs to be abandoned.
In the USA the bodies that are directly responsible to the people are still more subject to lobbying than the non-responsible ones in the EU. If being directly responsible to the people would end all lobbying that would be nice but it's obviously not nearly the case.
The whole thing about paying them more is stuff that belongs in every capitalism 101 book. The more money these people get from taxpayers, the more loyal they will be to taxpayers. If they get hardly any, they will look for other means to buy their luxuries and some lobbyists and industrials will gladly help in return for some legislative favors.
The best argument for a lobbyist is to show the politicians how the constituents hate them anyway unless they live like priests and how big business can protect them and care for their expenses. The lobbyists do not furiously shout and scream at politicians, they pretend to be their best friends, since politicians are humans, they also want friends, like everyone else...
There's actually a new book by a former lobbyist who seems to describe it just like that, I only heard about it on the radio though.
I don't, I switched to cheaper lightbulbs long before they were mandated and I have lately decided to replace all broken ones with LEDs instead of CFLs.
The whole nanny thing is necessary because when it does not exist, people will not gladly jump on board of the better train because they don't calculate or research. Instead they are influenced by misleading advertisement and superstitions.
This kind of rational profit-oriented behavior is mostly found in companies and not even all of them. The big ones however invest so much in advertisement because it does indeed pay off for them since they know it will influence people more than the truth does.
Why else does bottled tap water sell for 10-20 times the price?
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