that is the big question
There's a number of things that come to mind, all of them designed to prevent 'public service' from becoming a lucrative cash cow. For eg make congress critters subject to all the laws they foist on the rest. They do not contribute to social security, they have probably the sweetest retirement/health package on the planet.
They were allowed to vote all that for themselves. If they actually followed the foundations they claim give rise to their power (constitution) this ill gotten largess wouldn't have happened.
In fact there should be no retirement of health benefits provided to anyone in elected office. That would keep a lot of the greedy bastards away from the get-go.
So called term limits would be built into a correctly operating system. All time spent on government matters comes at the expense of your personal life, in which you are trying to make a living and save up for retirement. You'd not want to hang around the 'hallowed halls' too long lest your personal finances suffer.
Another is absolutely no contributions from outside the geographical area you serve. No corporate money either, only people, with some kind of maximum limit and full disclosure. You should be able to interview everyone financially supporting a candidate to discern whether you see this as a good thing or not.
Basically take the money, profit motive and power to vote riches for yourself out of their hands.
There's a lot more to it, but basically, given human nature and it's history, it's going to have to get a LOT worse before there's any hope of getting any better.
Fortunately, or unfortunately if one is squeamish about massive, sudden changes to their reality, the end of this corrupt ride is very near. I doubt we'll be talking about anything other than the complete tanking of the US economy (and it's 'dollar') come April or May this year.
The fundamentals are there, and obviously the govt is gearing up for massive civil unrest. (they've stocked up on billions of hollow point 'killer' rounds of amo in the last 6 months, for eg)
None of this is inevitable. But just as in Jesus' day, 80% of the people who are getting crapped on are utterly clueless to the fact, indeed actually support the regime that oppresses them.
Nothing new under the sun. There is hope this time, given the internet and the likes of anonymous.. and great minds like Aaron Swartz, fighting for the freedom of ideas.
