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Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

This gets bogged down discussing Boris a bit too much. But I do that pay for politicians needs to be improved. For me, the biggest issue is that politicians who lose their jobs are left without any pay. They know they can't win elections forever, so have to plan ahead. They could kowtow to every wish of their electorate, no matter how misguided and hope they do get re-elected. But the more likely option is to do a few small favours for corporate interests in exchange for a revolving door once they're out of power. Most members of Parliament/Congress get seats on the board of companies. Neither of these options is in the interest of our democracy.

I don't know what the solution is, but paying them a pittance while not making provisions for future income isn't a good idea I think.

(I am aware that pensions are a thing)

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> For me, the biggest issue is that politicians who lose their jobs are left without any pay.

For me, the biggest issue is that being an elected official is considered a career. It shouldn't be; it should be a temporary thing that people do for a limited time to contribute for the good of society, afterwards returning to whatever they did before serving. A policy that required private sector employers to give leave of absence to people who wanted to serve as elected officials would help to support that. It would also help if the power and scope of what an elected official is expected to do were drastically scaled back, by limiting our expectations of what we expect governments in general to do. Then we would not require elected office to be a career just so politicians could have enough time to learn how to play the political game.

Absolutely not.

You don’t expect a programmer to work in the software industry part time and then work somewhere totally different. Human beings improve their skills in fields with more practice and experience. Politics is a career: there are people who are good at it and we should most certainly expect them to work on it full time. It’s not like there’s any shortage of problems to solve.

> You don’t expect a programmer to work in the software industry part time and then work somewhere totally different.

For some programmers I think that would be a great option.

Granted there are programmers who are going to do their best work by focusing on code and little else deeply for years on end.

But there are a lot of people who’s decision making would be improved by having other experiences as well as coding.

And.. coding is decision making.

The fundamental problem is that politics needs a career track for people to become good at it. Would you consider term limits for programmers, after which they get to go back to their normal jobs in the humanities? When politicians are inexperienced, it just lends power to the lobbyists, the entrenched money, and the civil service.

> The fundamental problem is that politics needs a career track for people to become good at it.

This assumes that there are people who are good at it. That's the assumption I'm questioning. I don't think anyone is good at politics. Many politicians are good at using their positions to enrich themselves and their cronies, but that's not the kind of "good at it" that we citizens need.

Someone will always play politics if playing politics gives them access to power or money. If you weaken politicians in their ability to play politics than lobbyists, corporations, career bureaucrats and so on will gain in power. Politicians you at least have the option of not voting for next election while the others you don't even get that option.

> Someone will always play politics if playing politics gives them access to power or money.

Well, then the obvious solution is to make it so playing politics doesn't give them access to power or money. And not allowing politics to be a career seems like an obvious thing to do to move in that direction.

The emergency exit plan for junior Republican congresspeople is to join a think tank. But(!), only if they tow the party line. It is so common that there is a name for it: wingnut welfare.

I don't think junior Democrats have such an avenue available to them, at least not to the same extent. Senior members of either party go on to join boards of big companies or become lobbyists.

You make a convincing argument, how can we conscionably blame these people for wanting to feather their nest, considering the pittance the public pays them?

Now replace politicians with police, and corporate interests with criminal interests (I'd wager they're equally as damaging), perhaps we have people with the wrong ideals in these positions?

Graduated pensions based on length of service might work if and only if they weren't paid while the person is doing any sort of government contract or lobbying work afterward.

Pensions are your money held until later. So I am not sure that should apply as the employer should have no part of it and it should be managed by a third party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_and_flow saying pensions are money "held until later" is fiction. The "real"/material economy is mostly flows (most goods go bad), and most stock are correspondingly mere social constructs.

That's immaterial here and not the point. The pension is not the employer's, it is the employee's and part of their compensation.

What if the solution is Sweden's model of politics not necessarily being a career? That seems to attack the root of the problem.

How is that implemented, using term limits?

If you reward politicians too greatly, the allure of being a politician is no longer affecting political change or helping your fellow constituents. It's getting access to a sweet lifetime of cashflow.

Politicians shouldn't be paid more, they should require industry expertise and have a term limit of 4 years. You work in industry, you become a politician, and then you go back to industry.

From what I see the allure of being a politician is to set yourself up for a corporate job after giving the industry of your choice massive handouts.

The revolving door and regulatory capture are the real issues.

Sounds like you're talking about the Fed specifically, and yeah, that is a big issue.

I'm talking more about congressional representatives.

If you reward doctors too greatly, the allure of being a doctor is no longer saving lives or helping cure disease. It's getting access to a sweet lifetime of cashflow

So what?

It's likely beneficial for doctors to be intrinsically motivated to heal people, but regulatory mechanisms shouldn't be built on the assumption that it is the case.

Or is the idea that motivation is more important than relatively objective measures of effectiveness?

Yeah and it's a lot easier to sue doctors for malpractice than it is politicians for corruption/negligence. You're kinda proving my point.

This isn’t how the real world works. If it’s your kids who have a terminal illness, and require a surgery with a low survival rate, and you have the resources, something tells me you’re not going to populate your short list of doctors with the “economy” options.

As for curing diseases, I can’t imagine why anyone would care why someone developed a cure. As long as Doc saves my life, I do not care if he did it for the money or for the feels or because he had a weird fetish and liked the shape of the mole on my rear.

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