Submitted 6 days ago by Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
There are too many career politicians. People who would struggle to hold down a position in any other profession.
They join a party, learn how to get nominated and elected at college/university, find themselves in office the just grift until they die.
Really need some term limits and total service years. Pick your numbers, something but like 6 for congress, 4 for Governor, 20 max in public office.
Also their salary is based on their represented area. For a Congress representative, the national average is their base pay. If the area they represent is below average, a 30% of the difference is deducted. If it’s above average, 30% of the difference is added.
After 1 year, the percentage increases by 10 every year you’re in office.
So by year 6 if your doing a shit job your pay will be -90% the difference. If the national average is 50k, and your area is at 20k, the difference is 30k, 90% of that is 27K, so your salary is 50k-27k, which is 23K.
I’ll do you one further - their pay is no more than 3x the minimum unemployment benefit. This means maximum 3x the minimum wage, minus whatever unemployment doesn’t normally pay out.
(Federal for federal congress and executives, state for state congress and governors, etc.).
Their healthcare plan must be basic medicare (or their district’s minimum socially provided healthcare plan, if it covers more)
They must divulge past 5 years of tax returns to be on the ballot, and divest all stocks and blind-trust all assets to take office. Failure to do so defaults ownership of the asset(s) to the Treasury.
Merge medicaid into medicare and provide it universally for free, and wow, a whole lot of problems disappear like magic. It’s a pipe dream, and still nowhere near enough to fix everything, but the transformation would be dramatic.
I firmly there believe, for every politician, there is a period of discovery. I’d bet money even the ones who join politics with good intentions get to a point in their political career where there are absolutely no good choices.
I know this because I live it in my own life. For the politician, though, they have to settle into it, reject it and defect, or gamble. A good politician, one people mostly admire, is probably just a gambler that won the jackpot. They were in the right place at the right time and pulled the right lever. A bad politician is someone we see as bad only because we see them constantly making safe bets. Like a drunk who spends all day at the horses they bet the 2:1s and try to beat the house.
Its crazy to me that logic, reason, and decency arent very good political tools. They cant sway the masses. They always need to be propped up but some underlying moral structure that no one ever agrees on.
Anyway…
could we have a bare minimum tho? like, a civics test, because I’m really getting the impression these conservative fucks don’t understand the basics. At all. And when you only have vague knowledge of what’s right and wrong, allowing tyranny to slip by is just a lil’ ooopsie. But if we test incoming pols for the basics, when they violate their oaths to the constitution they can then be held accountable.
Now it’s just open season for any moron to come bumbling through the senate/house at state or federal level and claim they interpreted things differently while grifting the fuck out of what few freedoms remain.
I think what concept you’re trying to point at is compromise.
At a political level, compromising is never fun. “a good compromise is one where neither party is happy” and all that.
I wonder if we need a multicameral legislature with several smaller bodies segregated by purpose.
Have a house of politicians, career folks who do things like treaties and appointment of diplomats, that sort of thing. This probably needs to be no term limit or lifetime appointment because the purpose here is to be a member of the boy’s club, you’re the guy the chancellor of Germany has a rapport with. If you’re caught taking bribes, foreign or domestic, your death will be humiliating and uncomfortable.
Have a house of professionals, open only to doctors, engineers, folks like that. This body handles industry regulation, this is where anything from highway construction to food and drug laws to aviation regulations will be written. I would be tempted to eliminate voting here and make it like jury duty. If you’ve got a professional degree or license, (in fact I’m favoring licenses; I don’t care if you have a medical degree, I want a license to practice medicine. I don’t care if you’ve got an AeroSci degree, I want an airline transport pilot certificate, I don’t care if you have an engineering degree, I want a certified PE) you might be called to serve a term. It might be that this year the body is made of ALL medical doctors as health, wellness and medicine related laws are reviewed and updated, then next year it’s all civil engineers and they review highway and building codes, etc. Maybe mixed sessions happen for things like occupational safety where industrial engineers and medical doctors both weigh in. May also need to include folks with technical certifications like nurses, A&P mechanics, folks like that. This body doesn’t touch social issues, only things like standards for mineral content in municipal water supplies and testing standards for fall arrest gear.
Have a house of businessmen, who are given fake microphones and staff that pretends to do what they’re told, with actors making fake news broadcasts that make them think they’re policies are enacted. I think a core problem with democracies in the modern day is they don’t feature such dummy loads, so we shall install such a thing.
A house of lawyers whose job it is to maintain things like contract law.
What else am I missing?
what you’re describing is known as “expert agencies”. non-elected experts work together to suggest courses of action for the government on their assigned topic. since they are not elected, they can not make decisions, but they can draft bills for parliament to vote on. hey also do studies on request of other branches.
you may have heard of some of these agencies, like the FDA, EPA, CDC…
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
Douglas Adams
Smart people don’t want the job because they know how difficult it is and don’t want the responsibility.
Dumb people want the job because they don’t know how difficult it is and don’t care about responsibility; they just want power over others.
Absolutely. You reminded me of an old hitchhikers guide quote;
It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Wish granted, now you have smart, and truly evil people in the government.
Ill take it.
You’d rather right wing lunatics be competent and better at destroying the world?
Genuine step up.
There is probably a much better study than my silly little hypothesis, but I think politicians attract a lot of narcissists. Yes there are plenty of genuine and honest people in politics who are there to help people, but it’s also one of those careers that you can get by solely on lies and grifts, you are just trying to convince an average person to vote for you in most cases after all.
Then there’s peer pressure and opportunities and that’s how the whole government gets corrupt with time.
I think thats somewhat demonstrated, but its possible the power corrupts and brings those traits out, too
My hunch says that the good people who get into politics, end up staying more local to help their communities directly. The ones who aspire to raise the ranks are the ones you don’t want leading to begin with.
Very Douglas Adams. Those who are capable of being elected President are absolutely not qualified for the job.
“Never attribute to stupidity that which can adequately be explained by selfishness”, or something
Selfishness is kinda stupid though.
Just abolish states entirely, its much easier
Mr. Genie? Yeah, this guy right here.
Yay, I can be bullied by the local idiots instead or idiots abroad.
No, you can have a horizontal structure that doesn’t give anyone power over you and meets your needs.
the monkey’s paw curls a finger. now, only people that particular genie considers “not an idiot” can be politicians. shame that the intellect evaluation of a several thousand year old supernatural entity who spends most of his time sleeping in a lamp don’t exactly line up with most modern people’s…
So you’re a technocrat fascist who opposes democracy.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
It isn’t how stupid, ignorant or uneducated they are, those are all foibles I can accept as part of people being human, it is the violent response to the very concept of a spontaneous joyful curiosity to learn and know new things while letting them be, that I cannot.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
All im asking is for standards. Idiots is maybe too broad a term but Im wish casting not policy making.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
ok but this is like reddit my job is to find the most narrow, tangential thing wrong with what OP says and bikeshed about it