Indeed, and tbh "work must be paid for" is not necessarily a bad thing. In the Netherlands we pay for our tax-software via our taxes (and I still spend about 250 eur on an accountant to do it for me, as it takes me a whole evening as an someone with a (small) company, I'm better of writing hours), is it the most efficient? I think not, judging from how much our government spends on IT projects that fail. There are a lot of hidden costs.

That said, the lobbying is really bad of course, probably also prevents cheaper or FOSS alternatives.