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Politicians can't just appoint themselves to Congress or state legislatures. You may think they're idiots but citizens are voting for them. Is it possible that some of those "idiots" aren't as stupid as you think but rather just have different priorities and values?

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Politicians are optimizing for one objective: to be re-elected.

This is very different one from the objective I want them to focus on: improving the lives of their constituency.

In an ideal world, politicians who don't work on improving the lives of their constituency wouldn't get voted for.

As that is not the case and improving the lives of their constituency doesn't necessarily get them voted for again AND whatever good they did may get undone before it really shows its effects: of course they only care about being reelected... Even if they had ideals and morals to begin with.

Information and investment assymetry means there will always be election-winning rewards for dirty politicking. An actually effective politician, who has morals must balance the two. And they must try to be more skillful in general at politicking than their unscruplous rivals.

People are ecoring for them and others (include you, whoever reads this) don't compete with them and challenge them.

I don't think I'm ecoring for anyone. I don't even know what that is.

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