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Comment by applfanboysbgon | Hacker News Reader

Term limits are perhaps the dumbest idea that ever plagued democracy. The idea of mandatory firing your most qualified, experienced employees in an incredibly difficult job that can only be learned with on-the-job experience is literally insane. If not for term limits, the US would have had Obama in the presidency this entire time instead of the absolute garbage scraps that were left over when they fired the only person remotely competent enough to lead them.

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> If not for term limits, the US would have had Obama in the presidency this entire time

I like Obama as much as anyone else. But that would've been bad for democracy. Not to mention the man himself. He looked absolutely shattered by the end of his second term. Executives need term limits. And possibly judges too; albeit much longer terms than the legislatures or executives that appoint them.

I agree with you that term limits for legislators are a dumb idea.

Term limits encourage the development of robust laws, systems and institutions which provide a far more stable basis for running a society than having power structures that rely on the brilliance of an individual or individuals. Without terms limits or the like (and there are countless examples not just in history but currently around the world), individuals in power are motivated mostly to preserve that power and have less incentive to work on improvements that will outlast them.

With term limits individuals in power are motivated to pass laws that help them find their next job.

There are just too many examples of political leaders who achieved beneficial results initially but as their reign extended into decades, things went sour. Putin, Mugabe, Erdogan, Ferdinand Marcos, Mubarak, Hugo Chavez, Castro and even the likes of Gaddafi are commonly viewed as having improved conditions for the citizens initially but eventually left a legacy of degraded legal systems, weak civil services, rotten institutions in general, weakened or non-existent independent media and busted economies. It just doesn't work in practice which why nearly all countries have switched to term-limits.

These are all examples of executives. I agree that term limits on executives are necessary. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48049876 I think they're harmful for legislators.

"institutions" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. This often means bloated bureaucracy. I'm not against big government in any way or form, but inefficient, bloated bureaucracy with a bunch of mandarins doing the real governing since all the office holders get rotated out after their term limits hit, doesn't seem like a good solution.

If your hypothesis had any merit, shouldn’t Congress work far better than it does?

No. Term limits have no bearing on the skill floor, only the skill ceiling. By capping employment at 8 years, you place a hard limit on how good your employees can become. However, removing that limit does not magically make all of your employees good. You are still responsible for choosing to employ competent employees. If, after 8 years, an employee is still not good at their job, you have the option to fire them. That American voters are currently not exercising the option to fire bad employees is its own problem, and not a problem that is reasonably solved by mandatory firings, because the underlying cause is still there and voters who are inclined to vote for bad employees will simply choose to employ new bad employees.

Back when USSR was a global superpower there was a trend in sci-fi to describe the communist societies of the future.

One of the distinctive features of such societies was the ability to switch jobs every few years, including changes from leadership positions to menial jobs, from engineering to humanities.

P.S. See Ivan Yefremov works for instance.

I understand your logic, but in practice the evidence for term limits seems stronger. Many states have term limits, and it seems to work better than the states with entrenched institutions.

Nah you are wrong, and I will provide as much evidence for my position as you. It should be even stronger, every politician should have hard cap on how long they can serve for. Even just a congress seat and such.

Except in many cases the experience isn't benefiting the electorate.

At that point, the blame lies with the electorate for choosing to re-elect somebody who has a proven track record of harming them. You can't realistically prevent people from making bad choices in a democracy, at some point the voters have to have accountability for who they choose to vote for. Restricting who they are allowed to vote for is liable to backfire if you're arbitrarily removing the best candidates from the pool, especially out of a misguided belief that term limits prevent elderly politicians from taking power (yet Trump was elected for his first term at 70, his second term at 78, and Biden for his first term at 78... because, allegedly, disqualifying 55-year-old Obama in 2016 was somehow meant to help prevent geriatric politicians from being in power).

How else would you deal with people who are too old to do the job, and too senile to realize they can no longer perform and should abdicate?

Because we have politicians who can barely walk and talk on their own they're so goddamn old. These aren't the best and brightest of our country, these are old people who can no longer string together enough thoughts to understand their mere presence is hurting the entire country.

> How else would you deal with people who are too old to do the job, and too senile to realize they can no longer perform and should abdicate?

Mandatory retirement age? Voters being adults and fucking paying attention, instead of acting like children and believing everything they see on TV and social media?

The first is possible; the second, hasn't happened in my lifetime.

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