Instead, we have these lawyers who treat maths, science and technology with contempt, who legislate for us, and don't understand what the fuck they're even talking about.
* Sell themselves to a wide and fickle audience of stangers
* Manage a campaign staff
* Understand problems in the context of history
* Read and write legislation in a way that avoids unintended consequences or misaligned incentives
* Negotiate against people with whom they have fundamental philosophical differences
* Complete a PhD program in science or engineering
That last one isn't necessary for our actual goal... and it doesn't even help when you consider that this person will also need to be an expert on military grand strategy, healthcare administration, procurement, urban design, and agriculture. We don't need a congress full of subject-matter experts. What we need are people who respect and can work effectively with subject-matter experts.
So what is it that Senator Ron Wyden and Judge Aslup do that others should copy?
The key point is really only "Sell themselves to a wide and fickle audience of strangers"
That's really the only skill our unicorn needs to stand for and win election.
The policy or manifesto is set in party HQ outside of scientific or any other expert advice or specialist knowledge. In the hope it'll win votes. Then a series of staged interviews, sound bites and dog whistles seek to move the Overton window to their policy and preferred direction of travel. Nothing to do with competence, truth, Civil Service advice or the presence or otherwise of a PhD in the Ministry. Politicians get promoted and senior roles because of ability to control a debate, and their media friendly features and abilities.
The better laws on the books often come from hard won experience, case law and Select Committee recommendations. Those tend not to be the laws of policy headlines, manifestos and high profile Ministry interviews.
Hence we get ridiculous policies and political grandstanding on a whole range of topics. Climate change and Brexit being just two examples where fact and consensus are irrelevant.
They have career public servants who are specialists in drafting legislation to work with them on writing legislation that faithfully implements their policies (eg. in Australia, the subject of the article, there is the Office of Parliamentary Counsel).
* Manage a campaign staff
It is not necessary that politicians can do either / both, it is just that they appear to be the least worst option for at least a brief moment in the past.
I'm often reminded of that single panel comic where small child says "Dad, I'm considering a career in organised crime" and the father, holding a news paper, says "Government or private sector?".
> We don't need a congress full of subject-matter experts. What we need are people who respect and can work effectively with subject-matter experts.
In practice, you need experts inside the tent. There is a trust gradient in politics, with a sharp drop-off for anyone "outside" of the party room.
Especially if one side picks up an issue and uses that expertise to bash the other side. In that situation their opponent can either beat a retreat (followed by triumphalism) or they can deny the expertise. Especially if you don't trust the motives of the experts.
This is less likely to happen if all sides are seeded with expertise.
Banning CFCs is the best example of this dynamic. Reagan didn't understand the problem and it went against his policy instincts. But without the USA's involvement, any ban was pointless.
It was Thatcher -- someone nearby on the trust gradient, with a background in chemistry -- who convinced Reagan that it was a real problem. He still didn't understand it, but he had a trusted source to rely on.
I agree with the spirit of this argument, but there is a clear downside to not giving subject matter experts a vote at all. Ultimately there is then nothing to stop political expediency overriding facts and understanding, and the elected representatives are free to discard the opinions of the SMEs no matter how valid or correct they might be.
Obviously most representatives still couldn't be true experts all the different subjects that lawmakers vote on. You'd only ever have a limited number of representatives who were voting fully informed on any given issue. Still, at least that number would be greater than zero, and if you're a politician voting for a "health" law that 100% of the qualified medical practitioners among your colleagues are voting against on the same record, that tells everyone something.
Sadly, I've "seen" this (first- and second-hand) happen even with private-sector managers. When it happens to me, I always wonder, why did they bother to hire us (relatively expensive) experts in the first place?
I've heard tell on HN of "engineering first" company cultures where decisions are supposedly made based (exclusively, when possible) on objective criteria, but I have yet to see it at companies above a certain size.
Though maybe a more fundamental point is that our legal system is quite broken. The legalese is intended to ensure clarity, yet when it results in a system where fewer people than ever have any clue about what the law actually says, in anything beyond the most broad meaningless strokes, one must wonder whether it has actually achieved its purpose or not.
Apparently yes, and it's not just Australia. When Amber Rudd was Home Secretary in the UK she only opened her mouth to put her foot in it technically speaking. She came out with a hugely comical technical point after pretty much every incident, like the NHS virus a couple of years back, or when the government, iirc, "needed people with the necessary hastags".
Needless to say she was of the view mere citizens should not have encryption and that encryption needs backdoors for the good guys.
You get the same dangerous lack of awareness for science, environment and energy ministries as well as tech. Which makes me think the others, that I know less about, are much the same.
I remind people here that they should join a political party and consider seeking preselection, or at least influencing policy.
It's important that you join the party you otherwise most agree with. At different times, different parties will hold Government. Concentrating expertise on any topic in one party is a solid-gold guarantee that the other party will reject that expertise.