"...make little to any difference."
Working within a system that strives to enslave people, they do little but slow the works, but also inform us of these works, and thereby do much to enable us to avoid being enslaved. Banks, politicians, and all centralization of wealth and power is being deprecated by the laws of physics, that today increase productivity through decentralizing production, deprecating dependence on centralization, both of overlords and their slaves.
"...there is no reason why you even need them in this day and age..."
That is absolutely the fact. I have often noted that Hive can serve as a means of governance free people can use to debate communal development, and even to fund it, enabling only those that voluntarily provide funding - and not any that do not - to create, manage, and maintain communal infrastructure. The only incapacitation of that utility is the DV, which can be inflicted on such voluntarist operations to prevent them. I would fork Hive and eliminat DV's were I intent on forming a voluntarist government using this technology, for that reason. Clearly individual governments would have specific needs to attain their specific purposes that would require forking the software to be able to customize it to serve those specific purposes.
"Politicians are a major system error that needs to be patched."
Tech has advanced since the 18th Century. Back then the fastest means of communicating was the Pony Express. Now we can communicate securely using PGP on any text or email app instantly, and Hive adds the ability to fund mutual expenditures. Representatives were once necessary to facilitate governance. They are an impediment to it today.