this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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In every possible way, I don't want skilled professionals as representatives. Even if you get one they are only a skilled professional in ONE, maybe TWO areas - COMPLETELY inadequate for the vast number of areas the government is tasked with managing. That specialized knowledge is what the career bureaucrats the administration is gleefully firing are for.
I want someone who can ASK and LISTEN to skilled professionals, detect and reject bullshit from scam artists, and feels a responsibility to make decisions that benefit their constituents. There are 10 year olds that fit that description.
What you described is critical thinking, a skill extensively taught in higher education. So, you do want experts.
Critical thinking is taught in higher education, but not EXCLUSIVELY so, and unlike specialized knowledge can be obtained in any number of ways.
If I want someone to build me a highway, I'll ask a civil engineer.
If I want someone to figure out a tax impact, I'll ask an economist.
If I want someone to make good decisions, I'll pick someone with a proven track record of making good decisions without letting their own egos or misplaced ideas of their own expertise outside their areas of knowledge get in the way.
That might be a professional.
It might be a bartender.
It might be a scout leader.
It's entirely dependent on the individual person.
I would say 98% of critical thinkers were taught in formal higher education settings. Scoutmasters and Bartenders MIGHT be good people, they might even have higher education, but I don't think they'd be great planners and leaders without an education.
I don't disagree that higher education teaches critical thinking, but I think you are drastically overestimating the extent to which it is the exclusive domain through which people receive it.
I can't say I don't understand why. You can find some really good counterexamples among the uneducated.
But among them you can also find brilliant decision makers who AREN'T driven primarily by their own ambition and egos. Likewise, among professionals, you can find an ENDEMIC number who run only for personal ambition, have an overinflated estimation of their own ability to make decisions outside their area of expertise, and make decisions with a certain level of ingrained disdain for people they view below them.
There are good professionals who do care and don't run for ambition's sake, but in the case of them, the idea they need high compensation, which is where this discussion started, should be a moot point. Politics is intended to be a public SERVICE, not a full-time job with private industry-equivalent compensation. If it's not enough to serve because you want to do something to better your constituency, I don't want you in the role.
I'm not saying there aren't uneducated nincompoops, or that there aren't extremely competent and humble professionals running for office. All I'm saying is, given what I've seen of the patterns of who actually runs, all else being equal, unless I've seen evidence to the contrary in an individual, I will take a sincere, competent layman with sincere intentions over a professional every time.
I think there is plenty of data which shows hatred, self-service, arrogance, and greed all correlate highly with lower levels of education. Exceptions make the rule. Look at the USA as an example, educated individuals lean left hard while the right literally just dismantled the department of education and makes teaching some subjects a crime. But me saying theres data probably means nothing to you, since you don't respect experts.
I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth. I never said I don't respect experts, and I have REPEATEDLY throughout this conversation referred to experts as the EXCLUSIVE source of reliable knowledge, and information about options and consequences, so I'll thank you not to be disingenuous about my words.
That said, what I HAVE said is that those experts OBTAIN AND INTERPRET the data, and at that point, the decision no longer requires a PHD. The extensive studying and the information and options are now boiled down, and the making of the decision is left to a politician.
If that politician is, say, a constitutional lawyer, and this a decision about say, bridge tolls for a road maintenance fund, the lawyer doesn't have ANYTHING more to contribute to the decision making than the bartender. Any speculative professional knowledge he's using here is OUTSIDE his area of expertise. The bartender is FAR more likely to accept this and make the decision based on what is in front of them. The lawyer is FAR more likely to either feel like their professional knowledge gives them some special insight outside their area of expertise, a phenomenon known as "epistemic trespassing". And you actually see this in practice ALL THE TIME.
On the other hand, if the bartender is the politician, and we really need the lawyer's expertise on constitutional law? They can hire him. People don't LOSE the benefit of his knowledge because he isn't in the office.
"It's not that I don't respect experts its just that I trust my well spoken barkeep more than academic peer review and lifelong disciplines."
It is a skill. You need professionals in that skill
If you truly believe the ability to listen to professionals, ask questions, and make decisions based on direct information is only something highly paid professionals can do, I don't know how to begin to address the massive gap in our premises. I assume you're not a doctor, but when the doctor gives you health information and options, you don't fumble around helplessly. If you hire someone to build you a house and they present you with multiple options, I assume you're not an architect either, but you don't panic and decide to live in a tent instead.
There is a huge difference between deciding for yourself and deciding for a big group of people you don’t really know.
The first can be solved by intuition and emotional thinking (I don’t want to have surgery because I’m more worried about it more than about taking medicines for a much longer time, I want a two story house because it looks good…). While taking care of a nation is wildly different. You are confronted with massive, intertwined systems, in which many people that live life completely different than yours are affected. You have to constantly challenge your assumptions and compare them to a mountain of data. Yes, you have advice, but each advice always relates to a small section of the whole problem.
While such critical thinking skills can be learned in many ways (and they often elude our politicians) it usually require a higher education degree and quite some experience after that to develop. People that have honed this skill are valuable in the job market, and therefore should receive appropriate compensation.
I was right there with you until you started talking about appropriate compensation.
Politics is a service, like military service. The military is compensated well, but you certainly can't argue they're doing better than a professional would with the same skills. The same applies to political office. It is an act of self-sacrifice for the betterment of your constituency. If the fact of serving your constituents is not enough, I don't care about your skillset - I don't want you in the office. This should be a calling - not a career.
As someone that followed that mindset, and got stuck in positions that are much lower payed than the private sector, that refined my skills to an absurd level just to get payed around median level… that’s why I’m looking for jobs outside the public sector, that’s why basically all my colleagues feel burned out and unappreciated. A good read in this aspect: https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
A bit of sacrificing is okay, but as a politician you are already sacrificing a lot of your personal life (long, constant trips that make difficult to maintain contracts outside of work, lots of after hours events that affect your social life, often having to full on move for your job…) How far does self sacrifice need to go?
As a side: I also would like all other public sector jobs to be much better payed.
I absolutely won't disagree with you that public sector pay should be higher, particularly for publicly important positions, but let's also be clear that politicians and public employees aren't actually the same thing. A public employee is committing long-term to doing a full-time job in a particular domain as a lifetime career.
Political offices are largely intended to be temporary caretaker positions to be done as a self-sacrifice. Career politicians have become the rule recently, but it is by no means by intent of design.
There is a huge difference between these two roles.
So you are talking about a full overhaul of the system, not just a change on how the politicians are payed.
In your view, who would be a good politician? Because a short-term self sacrificing position works in the context of a “noble” ruling class that has the skills and connections to rise to the occasion at any time. But I doubt that is what you are advocating. So, I don’t see how a middle class could produce enough talented-but-not-career politicians. Would you mind discussing that?
Not at all. The system is already meant to be a part time, limited position. Senate terms are 6 years. Presidential terms are 4 years. Representatives are 2 years. All local and state roles have terms. Most LIMIT the number of terms. It's not a job you're supposed to do forever.
Even Congress' schedule is based on the idea that the members of Congress are doing this part of the year and then going back home to do whatever they did before. I'm not saying people that are good at the job shouldn't get to continue, but it's not DESIGNED to be a full-time, life-time job.
That’s the theory, but we see the practice being different. And I ask how you plan on fixing it. A job with a lot of requirements, very demanding, that you propose to underpay with respect to the private sector and that, after wrecking your life for a couple of years, kicks you out. Other than martyrs and corrupted people, I don’t know who would apply for it. And corruption is more widespread than martyrdom
Congressional representatives have a service of 2 years. This is not onerous. They can come from all walks of life but should probably go back to private life after their term unless they have provided such exemplary service they deserve a second term. However, I feel they should be term limited. If they wish to continue to serve the public, they can run for the Senate or run for office in their state/locality.
Senators have a service of 6 years which is a bit longer but then, their function is more professional... like they have to hold hearings, investigations and approve for executive level agency leadership and judges. They do need more seasoning, education and a higher public service commitment. They should have a clear understanding of the Constitution and high ethical standard for themselves and others. I don't think they should serve for more than one term, 2 terms tops.
That folksy wisdom of applying common sence and do what's right doesn't work when it's about faith of a millions. If I hire shitty builder because he was too convincing, and then chose wrong option because I am indeed not an architect, worst case scenario my house will be a bit fucked. If a politician makes the same mistakes, millions of people will die. So for a regular shmo this skill has small consequences and doesn't have to be this strong.
You're saying "listen to professionals" as if there is always one professional with one opinion and your options is to listen to him or not, but it's almost never the case in complex questions.
I'll say it again...
An expert/professional in one field does not have special knowledge that makes them better at making decisions in another. It just doesn't. And finding the wrong experts is a miss that a professional could JUST as easily make.
And I'm sorry, for the VAST majority of elected offices, the stakes just are not that high. No city council member in a city of a few hundred thousand is making decisions that affect the fate of millions. But it's EXTREMELY easy for someone with greater ambition than that city council to sell out the constituents of that city in exchange for aid to get to a higher office, and it happens ALL THE TIME.
I'll say it again... a reasonable, competent individual with low ambition and good decision making is, all else being equal, a better choice.