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Comment by tsantero | Hacker News Reader

I've always felt a little conflicted regarding term limits. While they are one possible solution for cutting dead weight, the problem is you also end up needlessly firing people who do a good job.

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Not to mention there won't be much of an incentive to work better (at least when they near their end of term).

To play devil's advocate: potentially that just means that elected officials would spend more effort running for different positions. House reps. near their term limits would be more likely to run for senate. Senators would run for governor/president. Etc.

The other issue I didn't like was you eventually wind up with someone who knows that even if they do the best job ever, they can't be re-elected. The capitalist in my cringes at the thought.

While multiple terms definitely incentivize, it also presents the problem of forcing the politicians to begin campaigning for their next term while still in office (quite possibly hindering performance). Maybe the best solution from an economist's prospective would be to leave out the term limits but to somehow boost the popularity of recall elections.

There are so few cases of people doing a good job over a long period of time, I'm willing to take that trade-off. However, I do think campaign finance reform should come first. Let's see what happens if politicians are really beholden to th people.

That's why we vote. If my district wants someone as their representative, who are you to say no? Yes, if you don't like your representative, you can work to change that.

It's not the best solution, but it's better then the alternative.

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