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Comment by yupper32 | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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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