If we take it as read that for someone to want to be in a position of power over others (ie a 'politician') is a form of mental abberation then maybe parliaments should be more like jury duty.

Random selection, serve for five years, no extended terms.

Countries are run by civil servants anyway, politicians just set the direction. Power to the people!

@AlisonW While I like the idea in principle, a five year term limit may be too short for the legislators to understand what they're doing. (The California lege ran into this as a problem with an 8-year term limit: legislators hit the buffers within 1-3 years of figuring out what they were doing—the learning curve was protracted.)

Also, random selection places a large proportion of utter dipshits in a complex situation where they can fuck things up horrifically for everyone else.

/1

@AlisonW Consider the havoc a conspiracy-theory-addicted anti-vaxxer could cause if they're given legislative input on public healthcare. Or just a typical twitter troll, fucking around for shits and giggles.

You'd also get some useful people deliberately avoiding service. Five year time-outs are a career-killer for professionals (pilots? surgeons? anyone with ongoing professional requalification requirements), never mind artists or authors. *I'd* run a mile.

And finally: corruption problems!

@cstross
Quite. Every option has problems, so maybe a level of pre-qualification to weed out those who would do damage? But we don't do that currently and it could be seen as censorship, so debatable.

Prime example of the S&G problem was, of course, Truss.