I only-kinda-jokingly say that I'd be willing to be the sacrifice and get a second mortgage on my house if it could buy the entire nation some new rights.

Our politicians routinely sell out smaller issues for "downpayment in a coastal metro" level of money. It's just about within reach of a middle-class urban adult to directly fund with some personal sacrifices.

I feel like we like to imagine that these corporations are budgeting big-bucks to bribe/lobby politicians, because they have more money than most humans can actually mentally picture, but their budgets are often closer to a small team of software engineers' salary. Meta spend ~$25M on all lobbying last year - and they're the top corporate spender. That's under 1 hours of revenue for them.

> could buy the entire nation some new rights

It's important to remember that rights cannot be received, or bought. Privileges can. Equally easily privileges can be taken away again.

But rights can only be won in a fight.

Sadly, they also require a constant readiness to fight for keeping them; in civilized societies this happens in courtrooms, but escalations to the worse happen periodically.