It seems appealing to be able to force corruptible goons like Pelosi out but the problem is the supply of corruptible goons is endless so you’ll just be replacing her with someone equally ghoulish and beholden to the ruling class.
And the supply of good leaders who represent the people is very small so the effect of term limits is to replace the good with the bad far more often than the bad with the good.
By rotating politicians on a short term basis you are forcing public politics to operate with short term vision, meaning long term planning is left in the hands of the opaque think tanks and the donor class.
Now, in the USA obviously that’s a moot point because all politicians are already beholden to the bourgeoisie but think about for example Xi in China. The neoliberal faction in China had imposed term limits precisely because they wanted to hobble the ability of any Chinese leader to effect change by limiting their term of power, which was in actual fact a transfer of power to “institutional” power (such as banking) and the long term planning of private power centers such as corporations.
Or look at the introduction of term limits in the USA. FDR was a lib but he was a social welfare lib and even that was too much for the piggy class of the USA to bare. The popularity of sharing at least some of the wealth in the USA made FDR enormously popular and so the bourgeoisie demanded term limits to prevent any future populist from doing that again.
Term limits serve the interests of private capital and not the interests of the people because corrupt goons are highly replaceable meaning it doesn’t matter if you rotate them rapidly but principled populists are rare and so should be preserved in power.
We need term limits for Congress and mandatory retirement ages for all branches of government. Imma say... 65.
no more half measures walter
regular revolutions against the government is quite the idea, but we'll try it out
Or perhaps
I don't think term limits would help, but I'd love us to have a mandatory retirement age nation wide which just happens to include Congress.
Term limits are a mistake.
It seems appealing to be able to force corruptible goons like Pelosi out but the problem is the supply of corruptible goons is endless so you’ll just be replacing her with someone equally ghoulish and beholden to the ruling class.
And the supply of good leaders who represent the people is very small so the effect of term limits is to replace the good with the bad far more often than the bad with the good.
By rotating politicians on a short term basis you are forcing public politics to operate with short term vision, meaning long term planning is left in the hands of the opaque think tanks and the donor class.
Now, in the USA obviously that’s a moot point because all politicians are already beholden to the bourgeoisie but think about for example Xi in China. The neoliberal faction in China had imposed term limits precisely because they wanted to hobble the ability of any Chinese leader to effect change by limiting their term of power, which was in actual fact a transfer of power to “institutional” power (such as banking) and the long term planning of private power centers such as corporations.
Or look at the introduction of term limits in the USA. FDR was a lib but he was a social welfare lib and even that was too much for the piggy class of the USA to bare. The popularity of sharing at least some of the wealth in the USA made FDR enormously popular and so the bourgeoisie demanded term limits to prevent any future populist from doing that again.
Term limits serve the interests of private capital and not the interests of the people because corrupt goons are highly replaceable meaning it doesn’t matter if you rotate them rapidly but principled populists are rare and so should be preserved in power.
I see your point. I stand by the retirement age, though.
Maybe don't make congress work to be a career work and instead elects only those who have labour works outside the congress.