Comment There are other nations in the world (Score 1) 191
Every statement in this post should be postfixed with "in the US" or some variant thereof. I can't speak for Europe, but I know that here in Canada very very little of this applies. For instance...
"Legislators do not pay each other for votes."
This assumes your political system allows any sort of free voting and thus trading of votes. As far as I can tell, this is generally very rare.
In systems descended from the UK parliament, representatives are expected to vote along the party line, and there is a party whip to ensure they do. Horse trading takes place though the whip, and involves party positions and goals, not votes. There is little or no ability for benchers to arrange this amongst themselves, and they will find themselves out of the party if they try it. There are votes that do not follow these rules, the "free votes", in which case the member has to vote according to their own personally feeling or their constituent's wishes, and again the trading of votes for favors is explicitly not allowed.
Although there is still considerable gamesmanship and jockeying for positions, for cabinet positions for instance, but there is very little of the sort of rider-attachement and "hypocrisy" you see in the US system. You may not like the ruling party's decisions, but typically they at least follow party lines and pass without compromise.
"Legislators do not pay each other for votes, and every member of a parliament in a democratic society is legally equal to every member,"
Legally perhaps, but I'm unaware of any system, the US or otherwise, where this is even remotely true in practice.