Tiny little point about David
In the United States, it is illegal for former elected officials to be hired directly into any sort of job which may be seen as directly tied to influencing government policy.* This includes especially that they cannot be hired as consultants for lobbying firms. In other words, the personal connections a person acquired from their time as an elected officials CANNOT be used to suddenly augment a private enterprise. The tax payers in essence own those connections, not the individual, and those connections ought to be safeguarded from providing an unfair advantage to a business on the open market. That David Oddsson was specifically hired for his political connections is exactly the issue. Those political connections are not in fact his, they derive from the position he held in service to his country. So it is not at all ridiculous to propose a law saying that former cabinet members here in Iceland, for instance, should be banned from certain jobs. If it is not considered over-regulation in the United States, it should not be considered so here.
*ie: there has to be a significant time lag, of 3 years I think it is, and there has to be another job in between.
Comments
It ought not be necessary to legislate against anything so blatantly silly, but I would say defining the connections one makes as public property (the same way everything I published when I worked at the Smithsonian was public property, even if it was my idea and my research) is a good way to at least stop terribly unethical abuse of said connections.