“… the problem is not that politicians disdain public opinion, but that they ignore community values…”

The whole argument turns on this phrase. But unless the author is going to define the difference between “public opinion” and “community values”, the discussion is vain. Both expressions have in common that they refer to people’s preferences. What do they have in distinction?

The argument is so fluffy that there is no conclusion it couldn’t claim to justify: it’s mere projection.

For example:
“… suppose we were to … [ask …] how the budget might look if members were asked to give priority to community values by acting …. on their own judgment and conscience.”

He then simply assumes they would share his own. Vain speculation on a vain methodology.

He’s talking about the community’s worst habitual amoralists judging their own judgment and conscience. It should be obvious that, in their official capacity they don’t have one: they just follow the leader.
“I always voted at my party’s call
and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.”
HMS Pinafore

And in their personal capacity, there’s no reason whatsoever why we should be forced to obey their mere opinions. The author’s unspoken grounding assumptions are demolished here:
http://economics.org.au/2010/08/unrepresentative-government/
http://economics.org.au/2010/08/no-social-contract/

“Suppose … they were asked to treat all citizens with equal concern and equal respect; this would rule out assumptions that people are poor because they lack character …”

It would also rule out assumptions that some people can be attacked or threatened to force them to hand over the fruits of their labour to fund woolly-thinking intellectuals peddling self-serving self-contradictory justifications for projecting their values onto everyone else.

The author is only showing the universal left wing anti-social fantasy that all wealth rightly belongs in common, or rather to the state, and that it should ideally be distributed equally. He ignores the fact that what he has in mind requires aggression that negates his ethical pretensions, his economic ignorance ignores that it works in practice to distribute wealth *upwards*, and, if carried out consistently, would destroy society and the state.

Fail.

…I believe most people hold the view that their involvement in the democratic process, is to be invited in on a periodic basis to vote for team “clown”, or team “Jester”: I am one of those!

JKJ: you’re a man of many words!

... Economists need to learn they live in the big world which encompasses the whole spectrum of society. They need to decide whether "they" (as a force), wish to live in a “fair” world or a F#*%*d” world. Isn't the truth closer to the fact, to state that economists actually have the tail of the political process in their hands, not politicians: Thus the GFC and it's implications of abysmal failure, on society, were handed back to the political class as an escape mechanism!

JKJ:

...I guess, to distill this line of thinking down to its most undiluted state, Economists continually advertise their wares as “Snake Oil”, and cannot be trusted on any level; thus are relegated (by thinkers), to the “tag” of unreliable, dishonorable, dishonest and untrustworthy, in the extreme, and so remain inexorably entwined with their political peers, all of them peering out of the same basket of crooks!

<< the problem is not that politicians disdain public opinion, but that they ignore community values, which tell us whether and why this opinion counts>>

What I find even more off putting is that our public broadcast services [the ABC, SBS & now increasingly NITV] increasing disdain public opinion and seek to push their own agendas.

This story of "social contract" brings to mind the story of the wolf and the lamb - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm#Page_42

What social contract could there be between the wolf and the lamb? The wolf is a predator, which eats the lamb for no other reason than being hungry - and so do politicians order us around because they like it and they can, not because they have any moral right to do so.