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Comment Threads

• Brett Dunbar commented on Making (up) News
  The minimum age for a Regent is 18, under the Regency Act 1937 it was 21 this was later changed by the Regency Act 1953. Under the Regency Act 1937 all of the Counsellors of State had to be 21 the Regency Act 1943 changed this so that the Heir Apparent or Heir Presumptive could be a Counsellor of State from the age of 18....
• Brett Dunbar commented on Making (up) News
  The problems with choosing by lot include firstly it takes a considerable period to become familiar enough with parliamentary procedure the bureaucracy and your colleagues to be effective. So you need to have a fairly long term. Secondly as the job ends after your term you have a strong incentive to spend a good deal of your effort on ensuring a comfortable retirement, an elected politician has to devote considerable efforts to retaining their current job. This means that a lottery based system is likely to have a severe corruption problem....
• Brett Dunbar commented on Making (up) News
  In order to be re elected you need to get people to vote for you, so you need to retain popularity with the electorate so you have incentives to serve the people. Corrupt politicians tend to be unpopular. While if serving a single term you have incentives is to ensure that you are comfortably off when your term ends so you either accumulate money or favours and no incentive to take account of the views of the populace....
• Brett Dunbar commented on Making (up) News
  If you are elected you have to keep the electorate sufficiently happy to re elect you, if you aren't elected you don't. Dictatorships in general score worse on perceived corruption surveys than democracies. There are exceptions but the trend is very strong....
• Brett Dunbar commented on Making (up) News
  I did say tend to be unpopular, not are always unpopular. As I pointed out democratic regimes tend to score well on the transparency international corruption perception index while dictatorships tend to score badly. A regime selected by lot has the same lack of accountability as a dictatorship and would therefore have the same sort of corruption problems....