They don't have to be corrupt at all, just the simple fact that media and lobbying power are mostly controlled by capital expended it would be naive to assume that non-corrupt politicians can not be influenced.
If they could not then there would not be a lobby, and media would not be as politicized as they are.
In my opinion, a politician has some freedom to choose who they listen to, and politicians who predicate that choice on their personal enrichment are corrupt.
But that's a black-and-white view. The 'gray' version is that it is perfectly possible for a politician to be of good intentions, but presented with a choice of 99 parties funded by special interests with megaphones and one lonely voter you can't fault them for having more - and usually better argued - input from special interests.
That's why many countries forbid lobbying entirely (not that that's 100% effective, but it's a start).
Judiciary laws are just one of the many incentives present in the real world. Money is a better data point to base models and predictions than laws.
> What if improving society was a reward-in-itself and we trusted competent managers to do the complicated bits?
This is the mental model many citizen seem to adopt to interpret their government. In my opinion it's closer to a religion than reality. People that willingly reject great personal rewards in favor of the common good are a rarity. They do exist, but expecting people in power to naturally adopt that stance, or expecting that elections is a good way of finding those people, is a mistake.
> Money is a better data point to base models and predictions than laws.
I completely disagree. Not all value is as fungible as money, because economic value is rooted in the diverse & time-sensitive needs of individuals and societies.
My demand for "potable water-value today" is not freely exchangeable, via a universal value medium such as money, with your demand for "quiet sleepy-time value next week", even though these are things we are economically acquiring. Regulations are required to prevent uncontrolled financialization from cannibalizing society.
Can you elaborate on that? It seems to me that in most of today's capitalistic societies these goods/services are totally interchangeable. If I'm rich and willing to pay for quiet sleepy time next week, I will get it. If I'm poor and can't pay for potable water today, I won't get it. It doesn't matter how relatively important to each individual the service is.
> And if that individual doesn't get their $0.25 of water, they die.
And in reality, people usually are willing to steal for things when they are desperate for them (which markets may or may not price in thru higher prices) before they are just willing to die.
> How is that a reasonable outcome in any functioning society?
I think the issue here is that I don't think we as people can all agree as to what is reasonable, or what "functioning society" actually means, though we are much better at coming up in aggregate with states that are possible in a given society (despite how unlikely some of those states are). In this, society is comprised of a combination of more or less likely "reasonable" and "unreasonable" states.
> There is no law that says you have to be a corrupt politician and enable plutarchy, although it is common.
There's no such law, of course, but there's also no law that a restaurant must offer food and service that customers like, and yet we tend to observe that restaurants which do that tend to survive better than those which do not.
