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Comment by cercatrova | Hacker News Reader

Political leadership being self serving while convincing people that they are not has been true throughout history, and will continue to do so in the future. There is no way to stop this without modifying human nature itself. I cannot blame the voting populace, yet at the same time, I cannot blame the politicians either. They are part of a larger system of incentives.

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Then perhaps we need a better version of democracy. Or a better system of government altogether.

I am hopeful that human civilization and ingenuity can invent or discover that. I am just not confident that it would be anytime soon.

The solution I think would be to somehow get people to lead who have no desire to do so. Politics attracts sociopaths and psychopaths due to the power involved. Competent and compassionate people have no time and patience for the power jockeying while sociopaths live for it. Thus you end up with a government by sociopaths for themselves. But how to make politics unappealing to sociopaths? Beats me.

There are enough honest, intelligent scientifically-minded people who want to be government leaders. They don't get elected. Current political system favors demagogues.

The trouble is that these people need to compete against a subset of people who want power more than anything else. These honest people decide it's not worth it, and get selected against and never make it to a position where they can affect change.

Alternatively, they do, and the process of getting there makes them less likely to do the things they wanted to do.

Bring back sortition!

It's not just democracy, it includes all forms of human organization, whether it be democratic or dictatorial. I believe it will only change once we genetically engineer people to be less self serving. Barring that, I don't see how one can solve this problem.

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