Lobbying is just a legal form of corruption. Ban it, and it will still continue to exist underground anyway. What we need is to stop voting for idiot politicians.
As long as good politicians feel they'll be disadvantaged if they aren't selling themselves like the idiot ones are the good ones will line up for the money.
Certainly it's better to outlaw it rather than to simply allow it to happen. You will never catch 100% of the people breaking the law, but you can create an environment of transparency and accountability to help and you can make it costly enough for those who are caught to make the next person reconsider risking it.
lobbying is illegal in many countries yet it does not make corruption dissappear, far from it. Its like the war on drugs: it makes cartels stronger, if anything.
What about creating a "Direct Democracy Lobbying Group" that lets citizens donate/vote online on issues and then (legally) bribes the appropriate people with total transparency?
The depressing thing about most bribery is how small the amounts of money are. Politicians take bribes in the form of campaign financing because they want to stay in power. It's easy for them to rationalize if they think they're serving the greater good, and many of them would probably prefer to take money from citizens instead.
It seems like one super rich person could fix every level of US politics by implementing a backdoor direct democracy and seeding it with matching donations. If crowdfunding has proven anything, it's that people have more than enough money to spend when they want something.
It's only now that everyone is on the internet that this idea is even possible, and no one has tried it yet.
We have a group sort of like that in Australia, Getup (not bribing but lobbying). The current sitting party is trying to get it deemed as a political party as it consistently lobbies against government policy (policy which is consistently against the will and interests of the public).
Well to be fair, it's difficult to be an educated voter since the candidates are allowed to say whatever they want in the election period and aren't beholden to follow through with the terms they were elected for.
