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.
In a vacuum I absolutely agree with you. In fact my PoliSci 101 prof defined politics as “who has power and how they use it” but in a system like ours where money also is a form of power (or at least a force multiplier of power) unto itself, money helps concentrate political power into fewer hands and magnify the ways they can use it.
It certainly would be naive to think that simply “getting money out of politics” would “fix” things but it is still a desirable goal for anyone who, themselves, does not currently have extremely large quantities of money.
It's slightly more complex though isn't? Because the actual problem is how to limit the reach of political power while still having an effective government.
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.