Forced Change
Jul 12th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 6 Comments |
Any potential leader who attempts to convince you to take him/her as your leader because you have a problem he/she can solve should be treated cautiously, as I discussed below.
It could be that the person in question will solve your problem and then give up her/his power. But given human nature, this should not be expected.
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The best way to “force” politicians to actually accomplish the changes for which they claim we need them is to make being a politician an activity whereby they prove their effectiveness to potential employers.
That way if they never solve the problem they claim to be needed to solve (poverty for Liberals; terrorism, abortion, immigration, etc. for Conservatives) it actually hurts them.
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The best way to do this is to set up “term limits” of a certain variety:
- Each person in the four levels of government (City, County, State, Federal) should be allowed to spend no more than a running-total of 12 years in that level of government before being out of that level of government for at least 12 continuous years.
- This restriction should apply to all persons who are elected to, appointed to, or hired for some position within the government (and the various bureaucracies, organizations, authorities, administrations, etc. run by government).
- After being “out of” any level of government for 12 continuous years, a person should be allowed to run for, be appointed to, or be hired by a government at that level again.
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12 years is the least common multiple of the term-lengths for Federal Reps, Senators, and Presidents. It would give Presidents 3 terms, Senators 2 terms, and Representatives 6 terms.
I’d suggest making court terms, and all other appointed or hired positions, 12 years.
All hired positions? That last one was a throw-in that you can’t possibly actually mean, right?
Dude, I never joke.
Actually I do joke. But I’m not joking.
(Cyclical) Term limits for all governors (people in government) would be the closest thing to actually introducing competition into such government-run atrocities like the DMV.
Maybe in an ideal world, but it wouldn’t work practically. It would just serve to make those government jobs less attractive than they already are. Of course, in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have this problem to begin with.
That kind of mandated turnover is one thing for elected officials and appointees, but for the kind of multi-level, massive beast that a lot of government agencies are, mandated turnover would be (imo) a disaster. This is coming from someone who works at one of those atrocities. You need reasonable stability at the level of the people who are actually doing the work.
The problem is the culture at the top, deal with that, and the rest of the dominoes fall.
Hey Presidents only one term!!!! Just think if Bush and Clinton only served one term. I wonder what would happen. Maybe a third-party candidate would get in(maybe your favorite libertarian :)
Scott–
I’m sure you’re right. But maybe I want disaster to befall all the government bureaucracies. I hadn’t considered that that was perhaps what I wanted. But maybe I do. *ponders* *grin* *shakes head at self*
Rich–
Good point. And perhaps it would make the job seem even less attractive than it seems to some people now, and they would spend less time running for it (complaining about global warming as they criss-cross the country, repeatedly bludgeoning their already-swollen carbon footprints so as to make them even more massive).
It all makes sense now…