You need lobbyists to pull on one side and the general population to be too uninformed or too non-caring to not pull enough in the other direction.

You need both, and both are responsible for the current state.

To stop this, you need to try to stop both until one doesn't exists.

> lawmakers need to be corrupt and/or incompetent for lobbying to do this.

Not really

Lobbyists get to talk into the ears of the powerful. It is literally their job. They make very sensible arguments for their point of view. So it seems very sensible, for the legislators, to make laws that aid the powerful and impede the weak.

The legislators are very busy with pressures from all sides. The cognitive load of considering views that you do not hear is enormous. It is not "incompetent or corrupt" to fail.

The system has the corruption baked in. It is one of the mechanisms, of many, that wealth and power concentrate in "democracies "

I have seen this process from the inside, good people making terrible decisions

So lobbyists did do it then?

The lawmakers are: in the EU you have a block of right-wing parties. The large part are funded by large companies and make laws which favour them. Same thing as in the US.

There are other right-wing (and left-wing) blocks who are funded by the Kremlin and Kremlin-supporters who just try to break things.

At the EC they're not corrupt, they try their best, but they're often given bad advice and are themselves not experts. And their power is limited (they can nudge but not push).