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Comment by chrisaycock | Hacker News Reader

I once read a statement that if absolute power corrupts absolutely, then endless power corrupts endlessly. Term limits are one of the most effective checks on a county's leadership because those with power will eventually find themselves without.

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Term limits are needed not just for the highest office but all elected officials. In my opinion the mess US is in currently is because of long term career politicians that are beholden to special interest groups. If they were limited to 1 or 2 terms most of them would care less about courting donations.

Flip side would be: short term limits impose an artificiality low average experience on a given job and make for less effective leaders.

There's obviously some happy middle ground between a year or two and unlimited terms, but there are problems with both extremes.

Yep, California instituted 2-term limits for most positions and it has basically meant that in the first term, they are learning the job, and in the next, they are often jockeying for their next gig, and not serving their current constituents.

A 2-term limit on a position with a 2-year term can be pretty hard. A 2-term limit on a 4-year term is a different matter.

The flip side to this is having a legislature who will never have career lawmakers, and so will never have the kind of experience or insight one gets from doing something as a long-term career. It also invites people to run for legislative bodies as a kind of super-credential, like getting a master's degree; it becomes a resume-builder.

You can have career lawmakers, just not in the same office. Cycling politicians between local, state, national would probably do a lot of good for each level.

Is that worse than filling both houses with legislators-for-hire? (I'm choosing my words carefully.)

I think the bigger problem with conflicting goals is that we want each small district to have its own representative for its own unique local interests (that’s the only reason to have per-district legislators), and we also want the entire legislature to represent the interests of the entire population. These two desires are, in some cases, fundamentally in conflict. That’s why we can and often do observe very low approval ratings of the entire legislature, despite each district presumably having higher approval of its own representative.

Really what happens is that this just makes the parties more powerful. A popular individual politician can only stand on their own for ~1 election and then the party gets to replace them.

It also shifts expertise out of the legislator's staff and into the lobbying apparatus.

The town I live in just elected its first new mayor in 44 years. What got the four and a half decade incumbent voted out? Too much growth. Ironically it may have been the large number of new residents, not beholden to the old guard, that did him in. With no scandals over that time period, it's hard to complain about someone serving eleven terms but it also makes it difficult to change course because the intention of the old mayor was to keep on keeping on.

There is actually an interesting trade-off with term-limits.

If the term-limits are brief, then lawmakers have to frequently rely on the party's election and fundraising apparatus, and therefore feel pressure to tow the party line.

If the term-limits are extended, then lawmakers aren't as beholden to the populous, and can therefore become corrupt.

I think I first read this balance articulated (much more clearly than I'm putting it here) in a book by the economist James Buchanan.

I think it's pretty easy to empirically find what's the right balance if we analyze history. In fact, I think most countries have already found that equilibrium, at least for government leaders. It seems to be 8-10 years at most. 20 years definitely feels like it's too long, even for super-appreciated leaders like Merkel, who I've seen make many bad/corrupt decisions lately, by propping up the coal industry, the polluting car industry, and so on. 20 years is just too long for any human to run a country.

For Congress/Parliament members, perhaps a little longer would be reasonable, but probably no more than 20 years.

Intuitively, I agree. I wonder whether such a study has actually been conducted, and what measures of corruption would look like.

Good point.

I totally agree. One fine example is of dictators of world who became threat to people because of no checks on term.

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