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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

> 't want people in congress as a career. Do it for at most 2 terms and get back to the real world.

How realistic is this though? Getting elected to Congress usually means having some other prior government experience, or your opponents attack you with "why would you give this person responsibility at a congressional level if they've never even worked in local politics?" Not to mention you need name recognition, a history in government that people can use to understand your values as acted, relationships in government to accomplish anything.

As I get older it seems that liberal democracy basically requires career bureaucrats to function. I'm very open to discussing other ways of organizing society, but if we're gonna do liberal democracy, seems this is the way.

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> How realistic is this though? Getting elected to Congress usually means having some other prior government experience, or your opponents attack you with "why would you give this person responsibility at a congressional level if they've never even worked in local politics?" Not to mention you need name recognition, a history in government that people can use to understand your values as acted, relationships in government to accomplish anything.

I would contend there are plenty of people in lower levels who can move up or not. Was the mayor of the next town over any good and thus I want to send them onto state congress? Was a library board member two towns over good and I want them in the US house? For that matter, do they run a good honest business (there are lots of businesses) that I can check out locally and thus I want to risk them.

The real key is that term limits need to apply to everyone and so nobody will bother asking about experience as there isn't anything more on their side to fall back on.

Though in the end you are probably right - doesn't mean I like it.

> As I get older it seems that liberal democracy basically requires career bureaucrats to function.

I agree, but the people in congress should not be the career bureaucrats.

> For that matter, do they run a good honest business (there are lots of businesses) that I can check out locally and thus I want to risk them.

It's always funny to me how much people hand wring over politicians and then they somehow believe that putting someone who currently and actively has large personal interests and incentives to make government worse for people for their own gain is somehow a good thing

If you think politicians doing things to affect their bottom line through stocks is bad, surely you recognize how crystal clear and more direct the incentive is to do that kind of thing when your "asset" is your own business that can't be easily pivoted and depends on labor being cheap and desperate?

Nevermind that those kind of people just usually have radically different worldviews about what a government SHOULD do, and that worldview almost never allows for government preventing them from harming people for profit

Most people have some ability to altruistic.

Even to the extent it isn't true, a plumber followed by a chef followed by ... ensures that whatever they try to do that benefits themselves is checked soon enough by the next person.

It’s called “term limits” and it’s a good thing.

There’s bad and good to term limits. It incentivizes short term thinking and goals. Supreme Court judges for example are deliberately given lifetime seats to get rid of short term incentives.

Go back to local politics? Why the only direction should be always up? At the end, who cares?

Career politicians with most power who reach the top will always be good primarily at one thing - bullshitting their way to the top in various sociopathic manners that no power structure anywhere is immune to. Those who are inside the circus for 30+ years? Expect them to be rotten to the core while wearing very polished masks, seeing and dealing with the worst and staying on top. Not a place for a nice good hearted well intending folks.

Don't expect some common good to come out of them just because it would be nice or proper thing to do, either its by mistake as a byproduct of some other effort or some pre-election campaign.

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