Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament

side benefit of a war killed over 100k and displaced 4m people is the population is generally younger and more open to changes.

Israel in contrast is in forever war but much less deaths, hence is stuck with this 77yr old leader forever. USA sort of same boat.

Not saying we should do genocide in USA or Israel to push for change, but in generally I see human live longer is no good, especially the tech to make human live longer usually benefit people in power first (people in Russia and China see this first, but the western now see this haunting them too)

Serbia is among the most corrupt countries. I doubt that will change anything.

More of this but Singapore and CCP core politburo should also be acknowledged.

I’ve lived for so long now that I’m cynical to many forms of government. What I currently think works best is a group of well educated brainy people, but that are led by some sort of strongman that makes all the final decisions. Seems to have worked for China and over the last decade in India. The US currently seems to have a strongman president but it’s missing the other crucial element of educated experts in his administration.

Good, next, replace politicians and shitmixers with AI bots.

Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was the world's brainiest hedge fund.

It’s interesting that Boris Tadić, the former president of Serbia (part of the previous regime, who lost to Vučić 14 years ago) echoes the same type of pronouncements about politicians and the commenters here on HN, and I do not mean this in a particularly laudatory sense. Just recently he was sending messages about how political experience, political vision and the like are key. How to be a political leader one needs this or that, or how Serbia requires this or that type of engagement with future technologies to remain relevant, comparing the student movement to blockchain (yes, really). This (incredibly vain and pompous) man doubtlessly has the most political experience in Serbia right now, and sits in several boards of Chinese and other multinationals, with other consulting roles, pretty much proving the bankability of his political talents. And yet that’s the person behind a series of political decisions and circumstances which inaugurated the previous regime.

Also, looking around the globe at professional politicians once also lauded for their political talent, like Macron, or Merkel, I’m really not seeing their policies paying off in spades, nor their "political vision" proving particularly beneficial to their citizenry at the moment. In all three cases, it seems, seasoned politicians made capital errors in judgement which are now causing resentment, almost unprecedented political realignments and upheaval across these nations. People are incredibly quick to judge the potential behaviour of a future political formation - yet Western democracies are by and large falling apart, as a result of career politicians’ actions, inactions, stupidity and avarice? As people speak more and more loudly on certain issues, like Palestine, these same politicians are comfortable ignoring them. Where is the scepticism for them, or the viability of this guild-like way of structuring the political sphere as the way forward? We are living the consequences of having career politicians lead, do we like it so much we cannot conceive of anything better?

Anyway, if you look into the local press in Serbia and especially enclaves like Twitter, there’s a wonderful symmetry: the EU champions are terrified the student movement has already shown "concerning" right leanings, they’re busy counting how many EU flags the students have draped themselves in while marching, and aren’t happy. The right is deeply worried about how the "globalist, NGO, pro-EU camarilla" is already deeply embedded in the student movement (they went to Brussels, after all!) and is perhaps even planting their candidates into the mix to sell out the country’s interests to the globalists. I am being slightly ironic here, but I have nothing but contempt for this thinking on both sides. Winning the election required the participation and support from both these camps’ voting blocks, which tells you how bad the situation truly was, since sworn enemies were forced to cooperate with a political unknown just for the chance to win against the existing political regime.

In a sense, only a political unknown could have won, as all pre-existing political factions, (mostly comprised of these praised seasoned politicians, many of them three decades into their careers) would not or could not muster the strength or wherewithal to work with one another. No nationalist would ever cooperate with a globalist pro-EU green party, even if it cost them their country, democracy, and those same national interests they hold sacrosanct. Likewise, no progressive citizen party saving democratic principles would ever work with what they view as backward retrograde nationalist movements threatening to plunge the country back into the type of rhetoric and milieu as existed during the wars of the nineties. Also, at some point the decades-long careers of many politicians was perfect cannon fodder for the regime’s propaganda machine, gleefully cataloguing their past sins and outright inventing them if the need arose. After a while, political experience morphs into evidence of one’s political parasitism.

It took a decentralised student movement which could not be targeted and besmirched, to engage the non-voting public and voters on both sides of the political spectrum. Part of the reason why all parties which took part in this election were swept away (except for the students and the outgoing regime) was because of failing to recognise the political moment. This election, in my view, was a single-issue election - the workings of democracy and stopping corruption and the further decay of institutions. This is what the political movement will be judged on, and what will determine its political future. The citizenry, at this juncture, is willing to table discussions on foreign policy for the sake of internal affairs and weeding out corruption. Most foreign powers and press corps, sadly, are interested primarily in the foreign policy implications of this new movement, and seem like they couldn’t care less if Serbian citizenry lives in caves, favelas, or in a thriving democracy.

Many things are still unclear, such as the exact relationship between the Parliament and Government, once formed, and the direct democracy practiced by the student movement. It is unclear how effective it will prove, or how they will select their allies and collaborators, as it’s perfectly obvious that the movement cannot simply replace the totality of public administration. Regardless, the new regime will enjoy a broad latitude and a measure of good will among the citizenry not seen in a generation. It needs to use that to good effect. If it fails to deliver, they will be ridiculed and attacked by members of both internal factions, and will more than likely splinter, and usher in a return of Vučić, who - lest we forget - is now the only opposition party in Parliament, with a sizeable number of representatives, and plenty of corrosive residuals and slush funds and media operations still at his disposal. Lest we also forget, with 700k party members, it is a powerful organisation even without the corruptive backend of the state apparatus.

Wherein I predict phds do not make good politicians.

Oh in fact, there's a term for it

Out-of-Domain Appeal to Authority

To me, an unspoken truth about politics is that it is extremely boring. Not governing, that is interesting. Doing politics. It's not clear from the article how involved the Students plan to remain once the government is formed, but I suspect a return to conventional politics lies ahead, for better or for worse.

Oh yes, this happened on an episode of the simpsons.

I used to believe very hard in technocratic governments where experts lead instead of politicians merely consulting with them as most countries do (or pretend to do to give cover to whatever they'd do anyway). Supposedly very technocatric governments end up being more corrupt than average but I can't even remember sources, just that after reading about I became less of a believer. I really want to believe it has to be better than having old people who's whole career is politics but who knows.

> a sociologist, several political scientists

How embarrassing.

Since they are not a political party, the issue will be who will run the institutions. They have 250 people on the election list. Institutions are also made of people. I believe these people are smart and know what they are doing, but they cannot do all of it themselves. I support this "experiment", but it will be interesting to see where they will find hundreds if not thousands of people to run the country. An established party has members as a pool to pick from.

For the folks out there that remember the USSR, am I the only one getting strong Правда vibes from that headline?

Is that really difficult to analyse elections in a non-biased way? This article is really missing the point.

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Meh getting them elected is one thing can they overcome the institutions and the bureaucracy stuffed with corrupt friends and former politicians that’s completely different.

Pretty cringe, and if what I've seen at the top of university faculties is any indication, it's gonna be a shitshow. There's something to be said for at the very least the common working class man having a direct say in things, if not the deciding say in the things.

There's no modern historical indication that more degrees results in better governance.

> Many of the new representatives have zero experience in politics. But their unparalleled professional expertise should be helpful in reforming Serbia,

So non career politicians.

This is essentially a technocratic government that is left leaning. Just because they are academics, researchers, doctors, engineers and sociologists does not mean they cannot go corrupt themselves (it will). The EU itself is heavily corrupt as well.

We have also seen how corrupt a technocratic right government can get in the US. It will be no different to a left leaning one once money and promises are involved.

To give an analogy of what this is, this is like electing effective altruists from Anthropic with the difference being that they are using your money (taxes) instead of theirs and giving lots of promises for your vote.

If they are serious, they need to pass the world toughest anti-corruption laws while also significantly growing their own economy or borrowing economic policies from the least corrupt nations in the world such as Singapore and to exceed them.

> Student List has promised to fight corruption and establish meritocracy, accountability, and the rule of law.

While these are good promises, the problem is that this is the first lie that they have already made.

They better do all four of them without angering the electorate otherwise they can’t be trusted.

They need to translate the election victory into tangible improvements and results. Otherwise voters in Serbia would not see any difference to the cleptocracy established by Vukic.

Hungary has this problem by the way - people thought Péter Magyar will fix, and change, Hungary. Recently Hungary signed a "we are ultra-right servants of Trump" in the USA (see https://telex.hu/english/2026/10/30/hungarian-fm-and-rubio-s...), thus validating all those who pointed out that Peter is just a younger face but the same Orban 2.0 in the end.

Corruption runs very, very deep. I am also certain the Epstein network is not only much bigger than known, but has different actors and beneficiaries. To this day the US court system can not explain why only Maxwell is in prison. That makes logically - and logistically - no sense at all.

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“All our problems will be fixed when this other group get voted in”

Man hacker news hates academically successful people

Now, here's a challenge for you: name an elected government that's the polar opposite. The greatest by assemblage of premium-grade idiots to have ever managed by any civilisation. I know - it's a very hard question.

Only one Serbian university barely qualifies to international rankings. Education from these institutions is not what you think it is. I'm not arguing against Serbia in particular, this applies to most Eastern and Central European countries.

It was a yellow revolution out of the CIA handbook, as usual students were used. Calling it the 'brainiest' is just a straight propaganda.

Healthy democracies do not rely on student-led protests to overthrow the government. Someone was behind it and they got what they paid for.

https://www.amazon.com/Jakarta-Method-Washingtons-Anticommun...

Whilst it seems like a good idea to have academics run government, history has shown that countries run by engineers and scientists tend to end up with some great roads and dams, but failing economically and socially in almost every other way.

Good start, but alas they cannot become a developed European nation until they sort out their historically ingrained russophilia.

We need a country to elect an AI government and see how it goes, on the ballot this year are Claude Fable, Grok, Carbon and Astra