As you probably might also agree, its a bit of both. Politicians don't go into politics thinking they're just going to accept donations and do whatever. They be

As you probably might also agree, its a bit of both. Politicians don't go into politics thinking they're just going to accept donations and do whatever. They believe the stuff at some level and then get corrupted by the marketing/lobbying. The greater problem is that politicians are lay people, and even if they wanted to listen to economists they would first have to navigate the topology of the topic at large, and then understand the minutia of what each side represents. Now apply that for 10 different varied fields including foreign policy/medicine/science/defense/social issues/etc and you quickly realize that its just impossible for any one person to make accurate decisions across such a wide swath of issues. Maybe the answer is more decentralization, but then you cant do the moonshots where you need to pool in the resources/talents/labor across a large populace. Its all a shitshow to some extent. But then again, the world hasn't gone to shit just yet so at-least somethings working .. :)