alt Hacker News> Guaranteeing [that congressional lawmakers] never get good at their job
I don't know if you've been paying much attention to US politics since the year 2000 but the vast majority of them are no good at their job regardless of how long they've been there.
> We need to stop pretending that Congress or any of these elected positions don't require skills.
I don't think anyone does? But currently the only real skills you need for attaining high US office are 1) be rich and/or have enough rich people in your phone book or 2) the ability to make Donald Trump feel like a special boy.
> Democracy isn't about letting any random firebrand run things.
waves in US/UK/Argentina/Brazilian politics over the last decade
As a thought experiment, imagine a world where borders exist as they are but the whole political process inside them everywhere is to 1) choose a zone randomly 2) choose a citizen randomly 3) receive policy proposal from them 4) vote yes/no on policy using random dice 5) for resolving ambiguity on any and all policy details such as "how much" or "for how long", return to step 1.
It's uh, king for a day, with checks and balances on human cruelty via chaotic caprice. How likely is that world to be worse than ours? If so, how much worse? If not here and now, then which counterfactual geography or year would you have to transported to so that this randomized process is definitely preferable?