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ChristianKl comments on What motivates politicians? - Less Wrong Discussion
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It's more complex than that. Few politicians are corrupt in the sense that they pass policy that they judge to be socially suboptimal because they receive money for doing so. Campaign contributions rather buy access. Politicians listen to the opinions of the lobbyists and the lobbyists are often some of the people who spent the most time thinking about an issue. That allows the lobbyists to influence what a politician judges to be socially beneficial.
As far as power goes, don't underrate the influence on politicians. They control a vast budget. Even redirecting smaller amounts of it can change a lot. Redirecting 100 million within the budget is only a slight change in the budget but it's a lot for the actions of a single person.
Really? We all know how hard it is to change someone's mind. Especially on things as primitive as political beliefs. You very well may be right, I'm just throwing it out there.
The kind of beliefs that get discussed in the evening news might be primitive. The tax code that made up of thousands of sites of legal writing is very far from primitive and developing opinions about how to change it in a way that's actually an improvement is not trivial and it takes an expert to explain to you what the different provisions actually do.
Obama care is 33,000 pages. It's very complex and far from primitive.
Don't confuse political beliefs used for signaling tribalism with political beliefs about public policy. A lobbyist is interested in policy.
It's hard to change someone's mind to a position very different from his current position. It's not hard to make incremental changes.
It's hard to change someone's mind via logical argument.
There are lots of ways to change someone's mind. (And giving them money is likely to help a lot in that, even if they don't want to take bribes and don't feel like their mind is being changed.)