>I think my shock was greater when I discovered that lobbying in the US means "literal legal bribery".
This is what the internet thinking lobbying means because they just want to be angry at a thing without bothering to learn about it because that would expose their own political apathy. Lobbying in the US means the exact same things that it means in the rest of the world. Companies will donate a few thousand dollars, so that a legislature will hear them out, but the legislature doesn't have to listen to them. There is some sketchy stuff going on with campaign finance for sure, but it's no where near as bad as "legalized bribery."
...as I mentioned, the vast majority of this money goes towards things like paying people to read legislation, prepare presentations, and speak with politicians. It's not "literal legalized bribery."
You might want to revise your assumptions. These are the top lobbying recipients: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-recipients. All things considered it's not a lot of money. The vast majority of lobbying spending goes towards mundane expenses like payroll at lobbying firms. The reason lobbying is so powerful is that regular people don't pay attention to actual legislation, so politicians spend too much of their time campaigning and end up outsourcing the hard work of writing legislation to the lobbyists. Regardless, it's definitely not "literal legalized bribery."
This is what the internet thinking lobbying means because they just want to be angry at a thing without bothering to learn about it because that would expose their own political apathy. Lobbying in the US means the exact same things that it means in the rest of the world. Companies will donate a few thousand dollars, so that a legislature will hear them out, but the legislature doesn't have to listen to them. There is some sketchy stuff going on with campaign finance for sure, but it's no where near as bad as "legalized bribery."