>consider how much lobbying money is coming from CEOs and companies

Make lobbying illegal, I don't understand why it's normalized.

Lobbying is "directly advocating for or against particular legislation or regulations." Writing your representative is lobbying. Fighting bad legislation is lobbying. Any good faith attempt to argue a position on a government policy is lobbying.

Giving money to politicians or their campaigns is not lobbying, and it is already illegal for lobbyists to do so.

What could and should be made illegal is allowing unlimited political campaign donations via Super PACs. Political donations aren't lobbying.

It's worth being clear about what you actually want to make illegal because you probably don't want to ban anyone from arguing a political position.

isn't it an attempt to give structure to something that surely would have existed illegally otherwise? banning something doesn't automatically stop it.

Who is going to lobby to make it illegal? Our system is broken and won’t fix itself.

Inequality is going to continue to increase until society collapses. If we want a better world we need to prepare for this eventuality by building avenues of popular action to return power to the people. Once the oligarchs have fucked up enough people’s lives, popular action becomes a realistic way out of this mess.

The US was founded upon corruption and continued that tradition throughout history. It's so normalized that almost nobody recognizes it.