As much as I hate to say this, and I really really hate to say this, to some degree things are as they should be.  The CEO of GM has a lot more on the line than I do, guy is in charge of factories and dealerships and jobs and stuff.  Me, its must me, Mrs. Steingar, the dogs, and Rosie the tortoise.  The CEO of GM should have more access than I.

I've been struggling with this one as well. It feels wrong, and yet I can't fault the argument there on principle. In a pragmatic sense - and this is true in society in general - some people's lives DO matter more than others. It is a bigger loss to society that, say, an Elon Musk should die than that I should, and so it leads me to think that he should be able to influence policy decisions more than I can. And he does.

The challenge here is that power really does corrupt, and access is power and money is access. If we take money out of the equation upfront, I am fairly certain it will find its way to influencing things through the back door, as it always does. I think it's just that most people don't deal well with the "in your face" aspect of reality - as long as things are hidden, they apparently don't exist, but as soon as you can actually SEE the reality of national politics, it gets folks riled up.

I even kept my username from POA. See how good I am to ya?