What's wrong with wealth redistribution? Money is essentially a man-made concept anyway. We want to keep people alive, so this constraint is very well captured by giving a basic income to everyone, a social safety net.
Libertarian free market economics don't capture these constraints.
Hypothetically, some form of wealth redistribution is necessary in a democratic society, otherwise the poor will vote to take the wealth for themselves.
To put it bluntly, no, the poor don't vote to redistribute--that's why they're still poor.
It's the rich who've made it a practice and habit to grab whatever they can, whenever they can; excepting those who were merely born rich, that's why the rich are rich.
That's circular reasoning. We have voted-in wealth distribution mechanisms today that have worked well enough to prevent the poor for voting for more.
But it is exactly as you said, recent changes in campaign financing policy and PAC funding has made it easier for the wealthy to preserve their position.
The poor don't influence politics via campaign donations, the poor have less access to politicians.
The poor don't take advantage of what little political influence they do have--they vote less, as well.
The rich, on the other hand, use every influence at their disposal to enrich themselves.
If the poor had a tenth the willingness to go out and exploit the system the rich do, we'd see a far more equitable distribution of resources than we do.
I think that you have misread/misinterpreted what Frondo has said. Frondo said, "The X doesn't do Y, which is why they are still X." You say/interpret Frondo as saying, "The X doesn't do Y because they are X."
What's the difference? Assume that a group of people have an expected group of behaviors. If they had a different set of behaviors, they could remove themselves from the group. But if they don't have those other behaviors, they aren't able to remove themselves from the group. Are they in the group because they are in the group (as you have been saying Frondo has been saying)? Or are they in the group because they don't have a set of behaviors to remove themselves from the group (as I interpret Frondo as saying)?
In the context of poverty in the US, there are countless structural, cultural, behavioral, and just daily life practicalities of why rising above poverty is very difficult. While I don't agree that the lack of political motivation and clout are the only or primary reasons for continued poverty, I do agree they are substantial contributing factors.
And I agree, politics isn't the only place where the poor in this country fail to maximize their advantage, it's just one place where they're consistently trodden upon.
And there's that saying about democracy, the poor voting themselves free benefits, whatever, that's just so very wrong. It's just another substance-free attack on the least politically empowered group of people.
Libertarian free market economics don't capture these constraints.