I notice that Rand Paul and his father support term limits for politicians. But is this really a good idea?
Wouldn’t this encourage even worse behaviour from politicians because they’d want to loot the public as much as possible and at a faster rate before being kicked out of office? This was essentially Hoppe’s argument in “Democracy: The God that Failed”.
Even if it is a good idea, is it really necessary to amend the Constitution and make it permanent and hard to change? There are bound to be unintended consequences.
On the one hand you have politicians who actually have a stake in what they govern [ I guess we can call this the Hoppe premise ] but then again if some crazed nut gets elected [ And I remember Hoppe stating that only the most inglorious politicians get to the top ] then there will be no time limit to his rule.
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Imagine a world where Barack Obama or George Bush are constantly reelected.
It does not matter, as the parties contain the power. So the parties will simply insert person B instead of person A. There is so little turn over between parties that term limits will not affect legislative outcomes in any fashion.
A better way to have a significant effect on legislation and the government would be to get rid of the central bank.
I am not completely sold on the Hoppean premise regarding term limits, despite approving of the explanation per it’s use of time preference (i.e. a monarch has a much longer term limit, so must think long-term, a politician has less of a term limit so he/she/it thinks more short-term, etc.).
I think it assumes that time-preferences are fixed & more influenced by incentives and/or external factors, when in my experience it seems it can be both external & internal factors.
It would also take away from individual responsibility to assume that shorter term limits would automatically make everyone in the position abuse it & not think short-term, just as assuming that longer term limits would make a monarch capable of being long-term thought & intelligent at rule. Intelligence is not a pre-requesite for politics, methinks.
In some ways, in some areas, it probably would work out to be true, but I could see shorter term limits being beneficial on the local levels in some areas, as more people may end up running, & eventual costs for the barrier to entry (for campaigning), since re-elections would occur more frequently, would go down.
I’m tempted to say I could care less & would let those who think it matters any longer to reform to have their dog & pony shows, since reformism is more or less moot in my view, but unless I move out of the country, it still eventually affects me, I suppose.
As for the last sentence, I don’t see that occurring actually. I would think far more moderates would eventually emerge (more so than now), if re-elections occurred frequently.
I think it would just hasten the process towards becoming a vanilla technocracy, amid the countries economic stagnation / destruction, & we’d might start resembling Russia at some point.
Edit: Damn Internet timed out, lost half of my post, so it’s not as coherent. Oh well, should keep out notepad more often :grumble:
I think emprically, that term limits do a little bit of good. Where they have been enacted on the state level it tends to weaken seniority power and party leadership. It also tends to create a sort of parliamentary chaos as far as coalitions for passages of bills go.
As far as long term preference vs short term preference, I think maybe people focus to much on the effect of the individual instead of the institution. Term limited legislatures pass far less bills (good or bad) and produce less funding for projects that are local based, so hence a little less pork bills. That is because their is no long term coalition that can last over the years that can continue to loot effectively. There is no promise that the guy whos back you scratched will be there for you to return the favor when you need it. However term limited legislatures have been more willing to pass tax cuts than non term limited legislatures and that tends to happen regardless of the party in power.
Also if we need to focus on length of terms and legislative turnover, it was far higher in the early United States Republic. House memebers use to just serve one or two terms and head back home as part of a tradition that was similar to the two term tradition President Washington started. Length of senatorial tenure was also much lower than now. So I think maybe not having a long term investment in governance is not always a bad thing.
But term limits do not create liberatarian societies anymore than government without term limits create libertarian societies. Term limits are like putting a band aid on bullet wound. To many people focus on them as THE solution.
I think it wouldn’t matter either way. The number of Bidens (tyrants who served 6 terms) vastly outnumbers the number of Ron Pauls (good people who serve as many terms as they’d like), politicians are politicians, and legislation is legislation.
Ron Paul is an “entrenched politician” himself. If there were term limits, we’d have a hard time finding another Ron Paul.
I think the Articles of Confederation had a good compromise.
I would say yes, because it would significantly weaken the Iron Law of Oligarchy.
Politicians (excluding Dr. Paul himself) only act semi-honest when elections roll around. After that, they just loot the public and push their statist agendas.