>I have no idea what terms limits of 1 day would do; it's not obvious to me. Please argue your point.

Not the GP, but I think the point is fairly simple to express. If you took office tomorrow, and had a term of one day, and there was a vote on a legislative item, how much could you possibly learn about the issue in the time prior to that vote? Short term limits mean that it's harder for legislators to really understand the more complex issues since by the time they do, if they ever do, they are likely to be forced out by the term limit. Additionally, they probably won't be effective at getting any legislation passed until they understand how to work with the system.

Another way to look at it, is how long would it take you to become effective if you switched careers tomorrow? What if you had a maximum time you could spend in that career? How long would you spend being less effective because you are still learning how to do the job? How long would you have to work at a professional or expert level?

If we assume legislators only need a few weeks or months to get up to speed, then term limits of 6-8 years don't matter. If we assume it takes a few years to become effective, then we're hobbling our legislators for close to half the maximum time they can be on office. It's slightly ameliorated by the fact they can seek another office in a different branch, but that doesn't eliminate the problem, they're still going to have to learn a lot (assuming what you learn as a legislator is what interest groups are important at that level, who of your fellow legislators are good at what, etc). Though the fact that everyone is in the same boat and there can't be some institutionalized personnel that are very good at certain things for others to rely on makes it worse.

Having no term limits has problems too, but the short term limits in CA and it's affect on institutionalized legislative knowledge and capability has been talked about for decades at this point.

> how much could you possibly learn about the issue in the time prior to that vote?

Again, the votes might be new, but the issues are not. There's plenty to learn about them before getting the job

> Additionally, they probably won't be effective at getting any legislation passed until they understand how to work with the system.

Again, "the system" hinges on authority of the other lawmakers. Lobbies and other non-democratic operators obviously exert a lot of power, but that takes the form of playing sides against each other. Term limits makes all of the legislator factinos played against each other weaker.

> Another way to look at it, is how long would it take you to become effective if you switched careers tomorrow?

I don't think being a politician is unskilled labor! But the skill lies in campaigning and bargaining, not voting. Unlike politician on politician vote struggles, politician on public campaigning doesn't out. Maybe this results in voter apathy and therefore blander/weaker bills but this is a complex second order effect.

I'm not even trying to defend term limits to you all here, just arguing that these arguments against them are as simplistic as the older arguments for them.

> If we assume legislators only need a few weeks or months to get up to speed, then term limits of 6-8 years don't matter. If we assume it takes a few years to become effective, then we're hobbling our legislators for close to half the maximum time they can be on office.

I'm perfectly willing to say they get more powerful and more skilled over the years. So the big first order effect of term limits is not on the absolute power of the legislature, but the relative power of new vs old politicians.

Not the person you are replying to, but I think the point they are trying to make is that the less experience a politician has, the more likely they are to believe what they are told by someone with an agenda who is trying to influence them, e.g. special interests. So the lack of experience doesn't cancel out for yea and nay when it comes to any given vote, because special interests will be lobbying mostly for one of the two, and thus the lack of experience (i.e. resistance to influence by having your own knowledge of the area) can tip the balance.

HN is full of dilettantes that are skeptical of every article they read here. Why would freshman politicians commit the faux pas of being gullible --- we can even ignore the actual veracity of wait they are told --- when they can be cynical skeptics too?

> Again you seem to be imagining legislators are dead at the end of the term and born at the beginning or something.

Term limits have the effect of putting the experienced legislators in the employ of special interests - because that is the only way 'up'. The time in office becomes a portfolio for said special interest jobs, turning legislators "against the [poor] people".

Yes! Finally someone in this thread has a coherent argument against term limits. Thank you.

(I do wait for the Empire-Strike-Back-Style sequel to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to dramatize what everyone else is saying...)

> (termLimit * nFor) / (termLimit * nAgainst)

How is that supposed to be an accurate model of the effects of term limits?

Fine, make it more complex:

> (f(termLimit) * nFor) / (f(termLimit) * nAgainst)

Same result. Unless you think that one side of vote is distinctly affected by term limits?