In the US at least, government was designed to be ineffective and deadlock-prone. When there was a monoculture, individual legislators (say, Tip O'Neil) bucked the central tendency to ... do whatever it is we do now out of a sense of duty and pragmatism. And as the monoculture faded, so did that.

As the culture got noisier, you had to yell louder. Once you ( you public servant ) get used to living without dignity and a sense of gravitas, it just gets easier... eventually the system selects for the lack of those.

There's much more money in it now, and money makes people take less risk. So you get cookie cutter.

I didn't claim that voters got what the median wants. I claimed that the main driver in the complex cycle of perversion of the function of government is the bad choices of voters.

Without an informed citizenry that can make solid election choices, even the best government framework is doomed to fail because it will be populated with politicians who are unable or unwilling to do the jobs they were elected to do.

That's more like "assuming a linkage not in evidence", a much less crafted thing than a strawman. It's ordinary carelessness, not savage guile. I can see how they seem like the same, though.

Although in the sense of revealed preferences, I'm sort of loath to call it all "bad choices." We are inconsistent, hypocritical, vain and venal creatures. That's sort of who we are; I can ... function better if I accept that and celebrate the odd exception. That way the glass is half full. For every thing that doesn't work, there are thousands of cases where it does.

And let's not kid ourselves. It's all very difficult, what our public servants do.

Yes, it's very difficult to raise that much money to destroy your political opponents while balancing all of the donor favors against what you promised to your constituents while also trying to figure out a way that you can become rich from your time in public office.

I have no pity for most politicians. They tend to be power hungry control freaks who have no problem lying to (get into/remain in) office. The lack of discrimination in voter ability to at least filter out the obvious liars is a never ending source of frustration for me.

We could do so much better.

Society is an enormously complex thing with all kinds of hidden influences and imbalances, and I think that saying "it's all the voter" tends to shut down thinking about the real alternatives for fixing problems. I'm not saying that I know what those alternatives are, just that they are likely to exist because we live in a society with structure. Since they're likely to exist, I think we should be looking for them and trying to address them in order to treat this kind of problem.

There are plenty of real alternatives for fixing problems that involve the voter: Education, access to information, encouraging cultural changes, etc.

In part, I was countering the previous poster who was blaming the 'Industry' boogey man, for why sugar has done the damage it has - but not mentioning the culpability of a government so easily influenced by money and then voters so easily influenced by politicians who don't have their constituents' interests at heart.

As you say, it's complex. But, we could talk about fixes on HN all day, but until voters elect smart politicians with integrity who will implement fixes, it's all just academic.