It's a similar story with education. Education in the US is deteriorating rapidly. And so why exactly would you want to rely on people who are experts in this system? We tend to ignore that a system is little more than the individuals that make it up. The reason US education is failing is because the individuals who we currently consider have assigned 'expert' status to, clearly do not know what they're doing.

Experience is something that should be valued, but not all experience is created equally. I have a rather worse than negative view of Zuckerberg, but I would vote for him before almost any establishment politician. Einstein referred to insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. And by that account, I think we have a national epidemic of insanity.

US education is deteriorating rapidly in places where undermining it and breaking it down has been prioritized by a handful of billionaire political donors, for example recently in Kansas and Wisconsin.

The most important first step toward fixing such problems is to pull the unaccountable, unlimited, anonymous money out of politics, and replace it with proper campaign finance regulations. Next we can try to guarantee every citizen the franchise, make our voting process saner and more auditable, and work on reducing computer-driven gerrymandering.

That's the conventional argument of course. But it's pretty clear the one party wants to govern, and one wants to "strangle the beast" (that is literally the policy).

It seems to me that people want government to govern, but not waste money, and they are fine with politicians who aren't captured by interest groups.

Neither party really wants to do anything except further their own power. Maybe one of the most clear examples of this is the TPP. It was going to be one of the biggest corporate handouts in American history, and it was being spearheaded by a democratic president who ran on a platform of trying to remove k-street influence (special interest/big donors) from politics. And while the democratic party put token opposition up, when it came time to for congress to vote away their right to amendment or debate of the TPP - they lined up and made sure he got the votes. It's all a charade.

Finally, a functional government would actually be dysfunctional. Our entire political system is built on checks and balances that means even a small voice in congress has the ability to stop actions from being carried out. The problem is we don't actually have a dysfunctional government. They are doing exactly what they're intending to do - carry out corporate and special interests with 0 hesitation, and then mostly flub about the rest of the time.

Counter example: Trump.

I think your argument is a perfect summary of the conventional progressive view. I'm progressive and very sympathetic to the argument you make.

But I think there's a lot more going on in politics than this neat narrative spells out.

I pulled out the Trump thing, because it's a great example of a person who spent a lot less than his opponents but won anyway.

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10941690/campaign-finance-left (which was written prior to Trump) has a lot more details on this.

To pull a quote: research on lobbying suggests that lobbyists are not the omnipotent power brokers that voters sometimes imagine them to be. Further, it suggests that insofar as they matter, they matter for reasons that are hard to regulate away.

I think campaign finance is important, but more than that I want to see progressive candidates win.

I don't think the nihilist argument that "politics is broken" is correct. Nor do I think there is anything which implies an inherent conflict of interest in politicians. A pro-NRA candidate will be supported by the NRA, and if they win they will listen to people they already know. The same with a pro-environmental issues candidate.

This isn't simply being beholden to special interests - there is a strong interdependence between the group and the candidate and it runs both ways.