When someone can destroy you, you spend a lot of time and money trying to influence them

The paradox is why the 'good government' types believe you can massively increase state power without a massive increase in efforts to influence the state.  They must think that people are fools.  Hattip Instapundit.

TIGERHAWK: The Lobbying Ban And Concentration Of Power. “When government at one level or another accounts for 30% of GDP, it is a huge source of business and regulation that any executive ignores at his or her peril. The extent of lobbying, therefore, is in direct relationship to government’s intrusion in to the economy, and since this government has intruded more than any predecessor going back at least to the first half of the Carter Administration, lobbying has no doubt grown notwithstanding Barack Obama’s stated ambition.”