alt Hacker NewsThis is the core flaw of the democratic system. Once a person gets elected, democracy effectively ends. Many of their policies may be harmful to the country, and their promises may not be fulfilled, but there is no punishment mechanism. As long as they step down from office, the media may criticize or mock them, yet no one really cares about the damage they caused.
Leaving aside the fact that offshore wind power is already a mature technology, at the current stage of human development we should be promoting this kind of clean energy as much as possible. I remember a scientist once said that resources like oil are non-renewable, and simply burning them is actually a waste. We should try to use them for other purposes whenever possible, since there are so many renewable energy sources available.
Of course, the lifespan of a country is shorter than that of oil, and the lifespan of a politician is even shorter than that of a country. That, too, is one of the tragedies of human society.
Replies
* This is the core flaw of the (USofA) democratic system.
* Once a person gets elected, (USofA) democracy effectively ends.
* Many of their policies may be harmful to the country, and their promises may not be fulfilled, but there is no punishment mechanism (in the USofA).
All democratic systems are not the USofA .. the USofA hasn't progressed much since inception.
> This is the core flaw of the democratic system. Once a person gets elected, democracy effectively ends.
That's an intentional feature of representative democracy, not a bug. Letting voters micromanage every individual decision would be direct democracy.
> there is no punishment mechanism
In the next election voters can and will exact a punishment if they don't like the direction things are going. Politicians live in constant fear of this.
It is true that term limits reduce the effect of this threat somewhat, but in a system with shared governance not everyone gets term limited at the same time so there's still a strong collective effect. The issue in this case is just that too much power has been concentrated in the hands of one term limited person; the executive branch was not designed to wield this much unilateral power over domestic policy.