My partner runs an advocacy non-profit and they definitely influence policy. Lobbying isn't just greasing palms. Most of the work is showing up at public hearings, meeting regularly with politicians, and organizing people to support your position.

There's a strong argument that lobbying is more of a "legislative subsidy" than it is vote buying or persuasion.

The idea is that most of the information governments need to craft policy is only provided by lobbyists and that government staffers are typically less informed about a given field than expert lobbyists.

Congressional staffers don't make a ton of money and typically aren't PhDs. One way to reduce the impact of lobbying would be to offer very high salaries to staffers so that we could attract world experts to our side of the table.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-s...