It also takes no shortage of conceit to imagine one knows better than the majority or people. Lots of individuals flit between business and politics--GHW Bush is a major owner of a gold mine where I'm from.* But an honest person isn't going to go into politics, because they understand the fundamental lie doing so requires.
*'Fact, I'd wager the two are strongly correlated--though I'm not privy to correlation data you are.
Has no one else mentioned this on LW yet?
Elizabeth Edwards has been elected as a New Hampshire State Rep, self-identifies as a Rationalist and explicitly mentions Less Wrong in her first post-election blog post.
Sorry if this is a repost