> being a politician should be a curse that the dedicated bear for the good of humanity, not cushy job and badge of pride

Nobody I know would run for state office. They pay poorly. You have to work in the state capitol, which in most state's is awful. You lose your privacy. And for what, a marginal legislative role?

The historic benefit was pride. But with nihilism in vogue and trust in government low, that reward is non-existent. Our intelligent and ambitious don't aim for public office. (It even feels trite to call it public service.) That's a problem.

I don't know you but I'd say no one you know is a committed public steward. However plenty of those exist outside of your bubble.

> no one you know is a committed public steward

I have friends who ran for and won local and federal offices. I specifically called out state because it’s min-maxing the power-honor trade-off.

Local and federal offices are also, if not more, lucratively profitable. Maybe it's not about some Platonic notion of power-seeking behavior but rather small people pursuing their own small monopolies.

>Our intelligent and ambitious don't aim for public office. (It even feels trite to call it public service.)

No, they become lobbyists instead. They have more power as they are the ones controlling the elected officials.

>That's a problem.

Then perhaps the job shouldn’t be done by individuals, but by groups developing systems.

my boss knows one of the former US press secretaries. At a dinner a while back my boss went on and on (for like 30min) how she couldn't believe her acquaintance was picked and how she should have been press secretary and would have been oh so much better. I asked her why in the world would you ever want that job, the pay sucks and you're just getting yelled at all day by reporters. She couldn't believe someone would turn down a chance to work in a presidential admin. We both had a little bit too much to drink and argued for like an hour. I had a tshirt made for her with a headshot of her, apparent, nemesis haha

It is incredibly lucrative to take one of these jobs. The last three white house press secretaries went on to become commentators and/or high ranking politicians. It's really not that hard to understand why people want the job.

Be careful what you ask for. There's no good reason that public service should be a "curse".

Humans are not angels, and we should not build systems that hold out some unrealistic expectation that they are.

Too often politicians are viewed as "saviors of the people" only shortly before they become "corrupt villains".

If we want to attract competent public minded people, we need to do a lot of deep thinking and system design to get there.

<personal pain point>

One good place to start is to get rid of this idea that every citizen's input is equally informed, sane, reasonable, actionable, legal, or thoughtful.

In a democracy, every person hopefully is afforded certain rights, such as due process and free speech, but this does not mean what you say is "free from consequences". The corollary is that not all ideas have to be given equal consideration. Some people say batshit crazy things sometimes, and frankly, these kinds of comments make life hell for many public servants. School boards come to mind.

Speaking, personally, I would like to be a public servant, in some regard (again), but I don't think we have realistic processes in place to really gather thoughtful feedback from the public. Until we do, public servants have to deal with a lot of informed nonsense.

I think software developers and UX people might not realize how skilled and motivated we are at building systems that actually work. I'm not saying that we build the right thing all the time. But so many government processes are fundamentally broken in terms of information processing. I'm not saying that they are broken by e.g. the tropes like "lazy people in government". I'm saying that the systems are (anti) designed (or evolved) in such a way that they're so painful that driven people get driven out.

If you think of a government as a way of processing citizen input in a way that is consistent with budget constraints and laws, it seems that many government agencies are not built using the principles that so many of us take for granted: system design, failure analysis, testing. This isn't just government problem, of course ... it is characteristic of large organizations of all kinds.

Democracy does not function well when too many people are simultaneously uninformed and yelling. This crowds out informed people trying to have a discussion.

</personal pain point>

The more unpleasant you make public service, the more you filter and select for people who want to use that power for evil ends and self-dealing. This is the same backwards thinking that causes people to want to cut legislative salaries, not understanding that this just makes it so the only people who can run for office are millionaires who can live off their accumulated wealth.

As it was in pre-agricultural tribal chiefdoms, where the most esteemed and high-ranking individuals were those who contributed the most hard work to the tribe. Although chieftains enjoyed certain privileges, it pales in comparison to the opulence in modern politics. And at least their status was genuinely earned.