There is also the direction of influencing those in charge of creating laws and orders and ways to prevent society from collapsing. Law makers who give in to lobbying -- I mean some of these prices points are quite low: $XX,XXX to get someone to vote "yes" for a thing that impacts millions of constituents and earns the lobbying orders of magnitude more than the payout. That is excellent ROI.

Yeah it is so absurd. The going cost of a politician in local California politics is on the order of $30-60k a year. Very inexpensive when they vote on policies shaping billions of dollars worth of sales.

Prices were higher when the risk was more than a spicy blog post making fun of you, when you sold out your entire town/county/State/country.