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Comment by vageli | Hacker News Reader

So people are unable to vote on issues but somehow intelligent enough to identify the candidate who best represents their interests? If most voters only understand pretty words, what difference does it make if those words are in a campaign for a piece of legislation put to direct vote or in the mouth of a political candidate?

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I think the idea is that you can spend the time once every few years to research a candidate, review key policy positions, etc.

Not saying its the best system but just want to point out that there is a time element. People can't spend time understanding each piece of legislation in general.

How do you evaluate a community organizer/constitutional law professor as a candidate for the US Senate? Or a real estate billionaire for President? What about the foreign policy positions of someone who's never run anything larger than a city? What more is there than pretty words in these cases?

>So people are unable to vote on issues but somehow intelligent enough to identify the candidate who best represents their interests?

No, but those politicians are at least able appoint reasonably competent unelected government officials.

Human intuition is much better equipped to judge intuitively whether a person or a group can be trusted than it is to judge whether a piece of legislation was written by a trustworthy person or whether that legislation is effective

So management are unable to code but somehow intelligent enough to identify the developers who can best create their product?

(I'm actually not sure if this argues for or against the point. I guess it depends on your management!)

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