I've been thinking of why the Chinese are so willingful to grant us such a generous line of credit in spite of the obviuos tensions between our countries. Besides the obvious motivation of keeping WalMartism, and thus their own economy alive I suspect that they plan to use the dollar card to keep us under control. It is logical - it would be much cheaper and safer for them to beat us on the financial markets than to confront us on the military front.

Another model is the Federal Reserve, where we have a piece of the government which exists fairly autonomously for a special function (managing the money supply), just as the Supreme Court has it's special function (interpreting the constitution). We (hopefully, most of the time) appoint highly talented economist/finance types to the Federal Reserve Board, and (hopefully, most of the time) highly qualified laywers/judges to the Supreme Court. We generally appoint roughly the right kind of people (political disagreements aside), just because we are aware of the specialized function of these institutions, and the importance of their doing a good job, and we get upset if less-than-stellar folks are proposed (as President Bush found out the hard way with the Mier's nomination).

The Supreme Court has lifetime appointments, as does the House of Lords, but the Federal Reserve has fixed terms. My gut feel is lifetime appointments is better (because doing the right thing for the long term sometimes involves having to do unpopular things in the short term).

Perhaps a more important question might be what kind of qualifications would we want for the members of a 7th generation council. I am of course tempted to say "eminent scientists!", since so many of these long term issues are complex and scientific, and parsing the science and deciding how much accord to give it is critical. But I also think most scientists have lived their lives entirely inside academia and have a dangerously limited view of how the rest of the world works.

I would keep it smaller than the senate, but bigger than the Supreme Court. Maybe 24 people. Enough that it can represent a diverse group of expertises, but small enough to be cohesive.

Maybe have a council with assigned seats for three groups: eminent scientists, retired business leaders and economists, and religious leaders. President proposes, Senate confirms. 7th generation council can veto legislation with a 2/3 vote. Can propose new legislation to the lower houses. Can hold hearings and subpoena people.

I think just having an institution with a name and a mission that said "Long Term" all over it, and some real power would make a huge difference. When they held hearings about world population projections for 2100, the media would have to cover it. It would put the rest of the century on the political agenda, instead of leaving it completely up to chance.