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Comment by _ktx2 | Hacker News Reader

> They include Travis Kalanick, Uber’s combative co-founder and then chief executive, David Plouffe, a former Barack Obama campaign aide who became a senior vice-president at Uber, and Rachel Whetstone, a British PR executive who has also held senior roles at Google, Facebook and now Netflix.

Why is this so common and acceptable? You have these towering technological firms who already possess vast amounts of power who have a pattern of hiring former political elites. Interestingly, apart of a top conservative at Facebook, many of these people have worked for powerful liberals. There's no excuse for this behavior, if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.

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It's also interesting that Tony West, Uber's current Chief Legal Officer, is the brother-in-law of US VP Kamala Harris. The political connections of this company are something to behold.

That said, I consider ridesharing apps better than traditional taxis.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tony-west-life-career-uber-m...

> if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.

That's not how democracy works. You'd be creating a second class of people who are ineligible to participate in their own society. And you'd be selecting along the dimension of those who actually do participate.

I am a data engineer. If my state representative calls me to advise in a technical capacity on data legislation should I resign from my day job? Do we want our lawmakers to be well informed?

What's the line to be barred from private industry? If I have to resign from private industry to advise my representatives then won't I simply become a career lobbyist?

You giving advice to a campaign is not analogous to what these folks are doing. At Facebook, Uber, etc these people are being hired straight out of full-time, highly influential positions with direct contact to political elite. It's not even hidden, many of them proudly brag about it on social media.

The current situation is affording a whole host of people who make everyone else second class citizens to their reach and ideas.

> if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.

Wait why? There's already such little incentive to get into public service. The pay is certainly garbage. Hell, the top position in the US government only pays $400k.

Who is going to want to work in government if we get rid of the ability for them to transition to private industry afterwards?

What's with the DVs? This is correct. You'd have to raise pay much, much higher to keep decent (for even very bad values of "decent" that we currently have) gov. workers and politicians if you also want to saddle them with a very broad and painful non-compete when they leave. That or they'll turn even more openly to bribery and corruption to make up the difference.

While it's true that you can make more money elsewhere, lots of people take jobs for reasons other than money. As one example, nearly every game programmer I know could be making a ton more outside games but they don't leave game dev.

The reason you're supposedly supposed to get into public service is because you want to serve the public.

I know it's being naive on top of being fiction but it reminds me of this ep from West Wing where they recruit a press secretary who's making $550k a year in Hollywood and tell her the press secretary job pays $31k a year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsM_eeUyOBs

> The reason you're supposedly supposed to get into public service is because you want to serve the public.

So we should artificially restrict the supply of talent for one of our society’s most important jobs?

That means you’re likely to get at least some combination of

- less competent people

- independently-wealthy people, who are I’m sure completely unbiased and objective

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