Term limits are perhaps the dumbest idea that ever plagued democracy. The idea of mandatory firing your most qualified, experienced employees in an incredibly difficult job that can only be learned with on-the-job experience is literally insane. If not for term limits, the US would have had Obama in the presidency this entire time instead of the absolute garbage scraps that were left over when they fired the only person remotely competent enough to lead them.

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tokai a few seconds ago | parent | next [-]

Nah you are wrong, and I will provide as much evidence for my position as you. It should be even stronger, every politician should have hard cap on how long they can serve for. Even just a congress seat and such.

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ungreased0675 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If your hypothesis had any merit, shouldn’t Congress work far better than it does?

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applfanboysbgon 6 hours ago | parent [-]

No. Term limits have no bearing on the skill floor, only the skill ceiling. By capping employment at 8 years, you place a hard limit on how good your employees can become. However, removing that limit does not magically make all of your employees good. You are still responsible for choosing to employ competent employees. If, after 8 years, an employee is still not good at their job, you have the option to fire them. That American voters are currently not exercising the option to fire bad employees is its own problem, and not a problem that is reasonably solved by mandatory firings, because the underlying cause is still there and voters who are inclined to vote for bad employees will simply choose to employ new bad employees.

	▲	sam_lowry_ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Back when USSR was a global superpower there was a trend in sci-fi to describe the communist societies of the future. One of the distinctive features of such societies was the ability to switch jobs every few years, including changes from leadership positions to menial jobs, from engineering to humanities. P.S. See Ivan Yefremov works for instance.

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cosmotic 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except in many cases the experience isn't benefiting the electorate.

	▲	applfanboysbgon 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At that point, the blame lies with the electorate for choosing to re-elect somebody who has a proven track record of harming them. You can't realistically prevent people from making bad choices in a democracy, at some point the voters have to have accountability for who they choose to vote for. Restricting who they are allowed to vote for is liable to backfire if you're arbitrarily removing the best candidates from the pool, especially out of a misguided belief that term limits prevent elderly politicians from taking power (yet Trump was elected for his first term at 70, his second term at 78, and Biden for his first term at 78... because, allegedly, disqualifying 55-year-old Obama in 2016 was somehow meant to help prevent geriatric politicians from being in power).