According to some sources I’ve looked at, a rule of thumb is 1000 to 1. So it is entirely rational for amoral rich and powerful entities (be they human, corporate, or non-profit entities) to invest their money and effort in buying politicians rather than competing or innovating. This blog post has some numbers:

Consider: The return on industry lobbying — let’s round up and call it $10 million across several Senate terms — is $124 billion in protected profit per year. Looking at the drug price mark-up in the Taibbi article — from $4 to $1000 — gives a profit increase of 250 times the original (and still profitable) $4 price in India. Let’s lower that increase, since I’m sure Taibbi picked an extreme example. Let’s say that, on average, the protected U.S. profit is “just” a 100-times increase over what’s profitable overseas…

So what’s the ROI to the drug companies on its $10 million in bribes (sorry, entirely legal campaign contributions)? If it’s $100 billion … again, per year … the ROI on campaign contributions is at least $10,000 in profit for each $1 spent to protect it, or more than 10,000 to 1.

If I’m off by a factor of 10, the ROI is … 1,000 to 1.

From a blog called Down with Tyranny

So doing away with this should boost the competitiveness and innovation of our economy quite a bit, allow small and medium business to compete on an equal playing field with big business, and allow less wealthy and powerful parties to have a voice in policy choices (“democracy” is one word I’ve heard used in this context). But who would have to make this change? The politicians being bribed, of course. There was one politician who might have tried to do something, but we didn’t vote for him. The administration we did vote for has not mentioned corruption as a priority lately, although to be fair they do have other urgent priorities.