> not shady side hustles and market manipulation at the cost of the collective

To be clear, I'm not describing this as legitimate self-interested conduct. Elections are an alignment mechanism. Stiff penalties for corruption another. We don't have the latter in America.

Sounds like a failure to align interests. In general, politicians should want to be elected by the public, rewarded for acting in the public interest, and punished for not doing so.

A system that does none of those things and just hopes it will all work out is a recipe for disaster. Why bother even having elections in that case?