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Comment by cm2012 | Hacker News Reader

cm2012·

In Obama's memoirs he talks about this. How when he was a community level, then city, then state, then federal level politician how he kept expecting the quality of people/decisions to improve in the big leagues, but that instead it was the same (poor quality) at each level.

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Is "A Promised Land" a good read? I've had bad experiences in the past reading books by politicians.

The Peter Principle applies to government, too.

I think what's often behind the Peter Principal is the temperament and skills to gain/hold a job are often/usually not the same skills needed to do the job. And often there is conflict and tension between the two.

It's interesting to compare/contrast that, with thoughts like these: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CKpByWmsZ8WmpHtYa/competent-...

I think both authors can be correct, and both sets of experiences are valid. But I think it's a sign that politics selects for political-competency, which has nearly nothing to do with general intelligence or other forms of competency/expertise.

When listening to podcasts where EU politicians are interviewed it seems like this is less of a problem there. EU politics have a high impact but a low "fame" aspect. Maybe the people that care about impact and not about fame are higher quality politicians?

I'm surprised by this comment. As an outsider (from Australia) but someone who follows European politics pretty closely, the quality of European politicians is noticeably low. Not that I would say Australian politicians are better, but I'm simply surprised that any European thinks that there is a higher standard in Europe.

I don't know a lot of them, there are quite many. I believe at least Frans Timmermans, Mohammed Chahim,Diederik Samsom and Bas Eickhout are very capable and have a high opinion of EU politicians.

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