The nuance is in where the ethical line gets crossed for "go bother senators". Having a meeting with a senator? Entirely reasonable. How much does it cost get that meeting though? Senators are very busy, y'know, so maybe they'll agree to meet after a donation to their campaign fund.

Senators are people though and they have to eat, so maybe having a lunch meeting with the senator would be okay? Paying for a reasonably priced lunch for the senator? Say $50? Each? How about a $300 lunch? At the country club? with a round of golf after? Dinner? After dinner entertainment? And what if that entertainment "happens" to be strippers and cocaine?

The senator needs to get re-elected though. So in addition to political donations to their campaign directly, donations could be made to "totally definitely not coordinated" SuperPACs supporting them.

That's before getting into the fact that lobbyists have no obligation to present a fair and balanced picture of the situation. It's easy to sell a narrative that doesn't reflect reality if there's no one to challenge you; you can just leave out any and all inconvenient facts. Additionally, huge corporations are able to threaten layoffs of the senator's constituents.

To be clear, some of this stuff is highly regulated. Eg we couldn't bring doughnuts to a morning meeting with NASA because they're government officials and that could amount to bribery. Lobbying just has a very complex set of laws to skirt - and if you're a professional lobbyist, figuring out how to skirt those laws in order to buy influence is literally your job.

It's also important to remember that most lobbying is not taking a Senator to lunch, it's emailing/calling their staffs with information about a particular piece of legislation. Staffs of these politicians deal much more with lobbyists day to day than their bosses.

>we couldn't bring doughnuts to a morning meeting with NASA because they're government officials and that could amount to bribery.

Were you a government employee? If so were you in a different agency? Can NASA employees bring doughnuts for other NASA employees?

Exactly. This is how legislation is passed: you send people to talk to the lawmakers about your issue and convince them to do something about it. Like everything else in this world, having money to spend helps.

Of course, because we're talking about money and people and relationships, there's inherently some corruption that seeps through, but most of the laws (and lobbying) is pretty boring stuff. Without lobbying most lawmakers would have no clue about some issues. How could they?

Lawmakers could seek out experts to ask for advice, rather than the experts coming to them. They could read papers, or have their staff do so. They could send staff to talk to people about the issues they're facing.

>Lawmakers could seek out experts to ask for advice, rather than the experts coming to them

I guess they could spend all their time researching random problems, but lobbying helps vet important issues. They are representing a constituency, after all.

And, in reality, good politicians do do their own research, and many even write bills and promote policy that they genuinely believe in (even when it agrees with lobbyists).