You’re always gonna have a ton of lawyers in congress and state legislatures because if you were interested in law enough to become a lawyer you are disproportionately likely to want to write laws.

I don't know about the US, but the simple answer in the UK IMO is that politics doesn't pay enough. So you get egos, old money, and people with concurrent business interests.

But try convincing a democracy that politicians should be paid more.

Doesn't pay enough?

I believe the basic pay is £86k. They're not brain surgeons or rocket scientists, so even that is not that bad.

But I believe the average gravy train bumps this up 3X with extras.

It's a literal gravy train of subsidies and expenses and allowances! Sure the basic pay is, well, it's arguably not that bad ... but the gravy on top is tremendous. Not to mention the network contacts which plug their gravy train into the more lucrative gravy superhighway later.

> They're not brain surgeons or rocket scientists

Yeah, voters don't want to pay MPs more. Yet when voters are asked, they want highly intelligent, motivated people. They want them to have technical expertise, which means time spent in higher education. Then they want them to work a full time job in Parliament during the week, but also be open to constituency concerns on the weekend. And once all of this is pointed out, voters concede that maybe MPs deserve to be paid on par with professionals like doctors. (It's a different matter that UK doctors are underpaid).

> But I believe the average gravy train bumps this up 3X with extras.

Citation needed. They're on a shorter leash now with expenses. Don't go citing one or two bad apples either, show us what the median MP claims as expenses. According to you, it should be around £170k a year.

In general, politicians and their aides in the UK are underpaid. Most capable people find they're better off working in Canary Wharf or elsewhere in London. An example is the head of economic policy for the Labour Party earning £50k while writing policy for a £2 trn economy. (https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/01/19/british-politic...)

Your first point has always interested me, as it's unclear how much technical expertise these people have. They just employ Special Advisors to do the 'difficult' work for them (again, something not included in their expenses but, of course, is a benefit). And the manner in which reshuffles happen when the Education Secretary suddenly becomes the Enviroment Secretary whilst having no experience of either.

Anyway, I'm very sure there are good MP's, but I'll not go so far as to say these people are underpaid.

I plugged the question into AI ... see below. Not to mention the subsidised "everything". Holidays in mates villas (and what mates, eh). The "director" positions on various companies, and, and ... it's not just the monetary value of these things. It's an absolute gravy train.

Generated Hypothetical Answers: we can provide some hypothetical scenarios based on varying levels of responsibility:

Scenario 1: Backbench MP without additional roles:

    Salary: £86,584
    Maximum Expense Claims:
        Office: £85,000
        Accommodation (Constituency only): £9,300
        Travel: Assuming moderate travel expenses, let's estimate £10,000
        Other Expenses: £5,000

Total: £86,584 + £85,000 + £9,300 + £10,000 + £5,000 = £195,884

Scenario 2: MP with Ministerial role and chairing a committee:

    Salary: £86,584 + Ministerial salary (e.g., £50,000)
    Expense Claims: Similar to Scenario 1, let's use the same estimates

Committee Chair allowance: £11,600

Total: £86,584 + £50,000 + £85,000 + £9,300 + £10,000 + £5,000 + £11,600 = £257,484

Remember: These are just hypothetical examples, and the actual value for any individual MP can be significantly higher or lower depending on their specific circumstances.

Voters want people representatives that will work out of civic duty. but is H.O.A.'s have taught us anything its that the people who claim to be acting out of civic duty to make a better place are mostly petty tyrants.

sure it would be nice if we could have Aristotelian philosopher kings style politicians but that's not human nature.

Congress pays great because you can ignore your job to be courted by lobbyists, get paid to rubber stamp laws from ALEC, and insider trade based on foreknowledge of what laws are about to occur.

This is like saying more lawyers should be writing software. Lawyers have extensive education and experience in the law and so work with..the law.

I don't discount the value of having expertise in law among those who write our laws. That said, I think that lawyers have their own significant blind spots as well. A lawyer is an expert on the law, but also will often be out of touch with the actual lives and needs of the people. Ideally, Congress should have lawyers - but also plenty of non lawyers (from diverse backgrounds), who can bring their own experiences and perspectives that lawyers lack.

Well, that's how you get "laws by lawyers, for lawyers", like "software by engineers, for engineers".

Maybe Congress needs the equivalent of UX and product types who actually care about what the people want... and can explain how it works to us in fancy how-to videos.

> Maybe Congress needs the equivalent of UX and product types who actually care about what the people want...

Members of Congress have plenty of support devoted to both what people say they want and what they actually positively respond to. That’s...the entire political side of the operation.

I don't know, while lawyers and MBA's are not who I would choose to run the country, I am not sure the I would pick people with the motto "run fast and break things" in charge either.

That's Facebook / Meta. They do not represent us

But what if we implemented agile and scrum? :^)

Imagine the retros!

>But what if we implemented agile and scrum?

thats what i am afraid of.

It's already broken. We could at least have fast internet and net neutrality.

It would be an improvement over "just break things", no?

If you like this idea, read the Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (he also wrote the Big Short which you may have seen). The book essentially argues that this is already the case in many (crucially not all) government departments. I like to TL;DR the book to other people as "the deep state is good, actually". Of course, the government itself is absolutely not helmed by technocratic politicians.

Quentin? Your second given name, I mean. Mine is Romanus. (Just idly curious, since we share the first.)