alt Hacker NewsMaybe. Politics is a skill, and not everyone has a knack for it. It’s dirty, requires compromise, and a willingness to work with your opponents. Or, well, at least it used to.
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As an engineer writing software and running a small team I'd flirt with the idea of "moving up". Then I'd really study what the VPs and CEOs actually did and realize that I didn't have any real desire to do that all day everyday. I could do it but it would require me to rewire my psyche and soul (not saying it's bad, just not for me).
In some clusters, senior academics are exactly like that.
Competence of democratic politicians is to be liked and get most votes. Usually it means to be without values.
I hope more people will realize that voting for uknown politicians that offers empty promises for artificially made problems means givig up our responsibility and at the end, make things worse as we see in current democratic countries.
The “skill” of career politicians is mostly loyalty and appointing people based on loyalty is the worst criteria.
In my lifetime, it has been a skill of procrastination. and milking the public…
We'd be living in a better world if politics was a skill and our politicians were good at it.
I would assume PhD holding people are smart enough to understand their limitations and strengths.
They've been elected during a very special events. They know what's expected of them. Looks like compared to the previous powers this lot at least gives the country a fighting chance.
You should see the skill level of politicians that were there till now, I'm not even sure whether calling them politicians is fair - maybe something closer to criminals, I'd say. Serbia (like the majority of the planet) needs honest and unspoiled people in governance. Educated or not, academic or not - these folks made the personal sacrifices and didn't earn student trust easy. Time will tell... But please spare me of the politics as an amazing unique skill, I saw where that led. Let's begin with being more fair.
I'm not sure if it used to be like that, but the skill required to politicians now is to get themselves elected, and that largely means the ability to lie well
> Politics is a skill
It very much is, but I don't believe it is the skill of "solving problems" or "making society better".
Politics is about getting elected. Convincing the people that it's all the others' fault, that you know better, that you will save the world. And then when they get elected... we naively expect them to solve problems. But we selected them for their capacity at being selected, not their capacity at understanding the big problems society is facing...