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Comment by Ericson2314 | Hacker News Reader

> California didn't help itself when it implemented term limits which had the unpleasant side effect of never having any legislators with enough experience in the job to know how to really get things done.

I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

The fear of rocking the boat effects anyone that, well, will live longer. Whether you are looking for continued perks/bribes in office, a cushy lobbying job after, or simply don't want to make enemies before your political next move, the perverse incentives are still there.

Perhaps a better thing to do would be to let the populace force votes on a daily basis (with queuing / anti DOS measures, of course), so the representatives have to go on the record one way or another, and can't hide behind inaction.

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> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

What? Take this to it's logical conclusion and imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays.

And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"? If you know nothing about a fairly complex topic, it's easy to be mislead, especially by someone with an ulterior motive that's playing a game much longer than your term limits.

> Imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays.

I have no idea what terms limits of 1 day would do; it's not obvious to me. Please argue your point.

> And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"?

I'm not talking about a vote split additive cancel out. I'm talking about how in `(termLimit * nFor) / (termLimit * nAgainst)` the `termLimit` factors cancel out.

> If you know nothing about a fairly complex topic, it's easy to be mislead, especially by someone with an ulterior motive that's playing a game much longer than your term limits.

Again you seem to be imagining legislators are dead at the end of the term and born at the beginning or something. They have plenty time to study the role before (c.f. the stereotypical centrist-psychopath politician planning from elementary school), and plenty of their career to be judged on their actions after.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of factors that reinforce the status quo, but I still haven't heard a decent argument term limits aren't obviously among them one way or the other.

Not the person you are replying to, but I think the point they are trying to make is that the less experience a politician has, the more likely they are to believe what they are told by someone with an agenda who is trying to influence them, e.g. special interests. So the lack of experience doesn't cancel out for yea and nay when it comes to any given vote, because special interests will be lobbying mostly for one of the two, and thus the lack of experience (i.e. resistance to influence by having your own knowledge of the area) can tip the balance.

HN is full of dilettantes that are skeptical of every article they read here. Why would freshman politicians commit the faux pas of being gullible --- we can even ignore the actual veracity of wait they are told --- when they can be cynical skeptics too?

>I have no idea what terms limits of 1 day would do; it's not obvious to me. Please argue your point.

Not the GP, but I think the point is fairly simple to express. If you took office tomorrow, and had a term of one day, and there was a vote on a legislative item, how much could you possibly learn about the issue in the time prior to that vote? Short term limits mean that it's harder for legislators to really understand the more complex issues since by the time they do, if they ever do, they are likely to be forced out by the term limit. Additionally, they probably won't be effective at getting any legislation passed until they understand how to work with the system.

Another way to look at it, is how long would it take you to become effective if you switched careers tomorrow? What if you had a maximum time you could spend in that career? How long would you spend being less effective because you are still learning how to do the job? How long would you have to work at a professional or expert level?

If we assume legislators only need a few weeks or months to get up to speed, then term limits of 6-8 years don't matter. If we assume it takes a few years to become effective, then we're hobbling our legislators for close to half the maximum time they can be on office. It's slightly ameliorated by the fact they can seek another office in a different branch, but that doesn't eliminate the problem, they're still going to have to learn a lot (assuming what you learn as a legislator is what interest groups are important at that level, who of your fellow legislators are good at what, etc). Though the fact that everyone is in the same boat and there can't be some institutionalized personnel that are very good at certain things for others to rely on makes it worse.

Having no term limits has problems too, but the short term limits in CA and it's affect on institutionalized legislative knowledge and capability has been talked about for decades at this point.

> how much could you possibly learn about the issue in the time prior to that vote?

Again, the votes might be new, but the issues are not. There's plenty to learn about them before getting the job

> Additionally, they probably won't be effective at getting any legislation passed until they understand how to work with the system.

Again, "the system" hinges on authority of the other lawmakers. Lobbies and other non-democratic operators obviously exert a lot of power, but that takes the form of playing sides against each other. Term limits makes all of the legislator factinos played against each other weaker.

> Another way to look at it, is how long would it take you to become effective if you switched careers tomorrow?

I don't think being a politician is unskilled labor! But the skill lies in campaigning and bargaining, not voting. Unlike politician on politician vote struggles, politician on public campaigning doesn't out. Maybe this results in voter apathy and therefore blander/weaker bills but this is a complex second order effect.

I'm not even trying to defend term limits to you all here, just arguing that these arguments against them are as simplistic as the older arguments for them.

> If we assume legislators only need a few weeks or months to get up to speed, then term limits of 6-8 years don't matter. If we assume it takes a few years to become effective, then we're hobbling our legislators for close to half the maximum time they can be on office.

I'm perfectly willing to say they get more powerful and more skilled over the years. So the big first order effect of term limits is not on the absolute power of the legislature, but the relative power of new vs old politicians.

> (termLimit * nFor) / (termLimit * nAgainst)

How is that supposed to be an accurate model of the effects of term limits?

Fine, make it more complex:

> (f(termLimit) * nFor) / (f(termLimit) * nAgainst)

Same result. Unless you think that one side of vote is distinctly affected by term limits?

> Again you seem to be imagining legislators are dead at the end of the term and born at the beginning or something.

Term limits have the effect of putting the experienced legislators in the employ of special interests - because that is the only way 'up'. The time in office becomes a portfolio for said special interest jobs, turning legislators "against the [poor] people".

Yes! Finally someone in this thread has a coherent argument against term limits. Thank you.

(I do wait for the Empire-Strike-Back-Style sequel to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to dramatize what everyone else is saying...)

Yay & Nay votes aren't the only job of legislators. They're often responsible for writing good legislation too -- something that's arguably difficult to do if you're new to the job, so the task (largely) falls back to special interests to "help" with the process.

By way of example: Literature. It's easy to read a good book; it's much harder to write one without lots & lots of practice.

Even when the outside interests don't write the legislation, it's the staff and not actually politicians that too: politicians are basically constantly in meetings / at events and have no time for such work. :|

Nothing prevents the staff from being retained from when legislator to the next.

And that's partly how you end up with what many people would perceive as a "shadow government" -- obviously a group of people are writing the laws, and most likely they're experienced in doing so, but who _are_ they? And who are they accountable to?

Kind of like the bureaucratic equivalent of external consultants coming into a private company.

You’ve just the Civil Service.

British series "Yes, Minister" / "Yes, Prime Minister" immediately come to mind.

> Even when the outside interests don't write the legislation, it's the staff and not actually politicians that too: politicians are basically constantly in meetings / at events and have no time for such work.

That's a little bit true but mostly misleading. As with any office with professional staff, most of the work of a legislative office is done by the staff, not the head of the office, true. OTOH, that doesn't mean the the skill, knowledge, and understanding of the head of the office is irrelevant, as the head directs the staff strategically, reviews, inquires, refines, and redirects work, etc.

> Nothing prevents the staff from being retained from when legislator to the next.

The new legislators not having the skill to select appropriate staff might, but a bigger problem isn't that the staff aren't retained but that they usually are; the less skilled the legislators are, the more the professional staff (who probably are shuttling back and forth between working for legislators and working for interest groups) do not only the detail work, but also control the agenda, and the less which faces the electorate sends to fill the nominally most important seats actually matter.

That's a better argument, but also note that's it's a preventable mistake of legislatures not to rehire and therefore force the conflict of interest revolving door issue.

Also note that this sort of negligence is happening today despite a lack of fedral congressional term limits: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/05/24/vital-stats... . I can't find a source but I believe there is a similar issue with the per-congressperson researcher appropriations.

So while perhaps less turnover helps make for stabler staffing jobs, it's not a cure-all. Ultimately the balance between Expertise and Democracy is a difficult one that we need to do a better job at (usually having not enough of both!) with or without term limits.

Many legislators come to the job with previous experience serving at the county or city level. Once they have are elected at the state level they can serve for up to 12 years. To me, that seems like a reasonable balance between giving them enough time to gain experience while not allowing them to stay in office forever and amass the power and corruption that led to the passage of term limits (proposition 140) in the first place.

The academic literature is overwhelming support of the argument that legislative term limits have zero value. They only lead to inexperienced, ineffective legislators.

It would be nice to have a citation or two from said academic literature.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/18/five-reason...

It's not academic literature, it's an op-ed piece. And every one of the 5 reasons can be challenged.

Especially the "less choice" one.

I actually think the argument about committee chairing is a bit more credible than what's been said in this thread. Stability definitely can help nurture depth more than a parade of different positions.

Policy stability overall is valuable, but staggered terms can provide for continuity of policy without changes that are too rapid.

Agree with the other comment, cite this overwhelming academic literature.

> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

Your analysis seems to think that legislation is just pushing "yay" or "nay" buttons, and that discussion of experience simply is about people having the skill to find the correct button. (Though inexperience there wouldn't cancel out, either, even with a 50/50 split in intended votes, it would lead to reduced predictability.)

Legislators do more than push "yay" and "nay" buttons on packages that are assembled completely outside of their control, though.

I do think they do plenty more than "yay" or "nay", but the lack of courage among our legislatures is evidenced in both the California legislature and Congress, so I'm less inclined to think term limits is the relevant issue

In California I think the huge dominance of the landowning class is more pertinent.

Really, I want a non-FPTP parliamentary system. Politics should officially be a "team sport" as it is in practice, and should be a battle of ideologies not personalities. Coincidentally, these means (to me at least) that not having term limits is way less of potential problem, and so I would be against having them.

Inexperience should "cancel out"? This mental model of how legislature is developed and then passed is probably the silliest I've ever heard. You should be more discerning of your thought processes.

> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

There are no term limits on C-level executives in deep-pocketed corporations and special interests. The term limits are on the legislators they buy. It's like a subscription model: you need to renew every few years to keep the gravy flowing.

This is the argument for term limits, BTW: Incumbuants are terrified of their next campaign (which is a every 2 years threat for representatives in the House, btw.) whereas more term limits means more brazen lame ducks.

Then again, lame ducks need a job afterword so it's a bad augment too.

My conclusions is that term limits seam mostly for show, with muddle benefits and disadvantages. Perhaps the real policy move is term limits + enough UBI that the lame ducks are truly safe no matter what.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition is a neat idea which is like term limits but on steroids: you're as suddenly on the job as you are suddenly off it. I think this example, with the heightened stakes / wider Overton window, makes for the more interesting debate.

That would be an accurate analysis if this was, for example, random noise in a system. But inexperience is not random, and cannot be said to "cancel out" in any meaningful way.

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