Genuine question. It seems like a topic that isn’t discussed in-depth often anywhere I can find online.
To be clear, I’m talking about technocracy as in policies are driven by those with the relevant skills (instead of popularity, skills in campaigning, etc.).
So no, I don’t necessarily want a mechanical engineer for president. I do want a team of economists to not tank the economy with tariffs, though.
And I do want a social scientist to have a hand in evaluating policy ideas by experts. A psychologist might have novel insights into how to improve educational policy, but the social scientist would help with the execution side so it doesn’t flop or go off the rails.
The more I look at successful organizations like J-PAL, which trains government personnel how to conduct randomized controlled trials on programs (among other things), the more it seems like we should at least have government officials who have some evidence base and sound reasoning for their policies. J-PAL is the reason why several governments scaled back pilots that didn’t work and instead allocated funds to scale programs that did work.
How do you select the psychologist, social scientist, and team of economists that fill these roles?
Yeah, it’s sort of a chicken before the egg problem - you need an expert to identify one. The potential for echo chambers is there.
In practice, though, wouldn’t it be similar to how any other role is filled?
Here’s one criterion: Outcomes. What is their track record? Have they made meaningful contributions that solve complex problems? I don’t need an intimate knowledge of carpentry to see that a contractor’s reviews have photos of great (or not so great) work.
The actual electoral process could be a variety of approaches, and all have their weaknesses, but most would be ‘less wrong’ than the current system.
Hardly any economist would agree with a tariff, yet here we are.
I don’t have a stake in whether it’s a nomination system by academic organizations, or some other minimum bar, or whether the process is still ultimately democratic, etc. One can theorycraft all kinds of technocratic electoral systems and their weaknesses, but I’m gonna need some convincing that any systems’ flaws are worse than what we have now.
If we’re talking about which forms of government are “better” than others, we need a benchmark of what makes one better or worse. I’m a big fan of the ideal stated in the US declaration of independence: governments exist to preserve the rights of their people, in the broadest possible sense.
A technocracy, where established experts make relevant rules, is probably the worst form of government that’s still trying to be good. For whatever topic you have, the original paradigm becomes fiercely embedded, and because power wants to preserve itself that basic framework would be even worse than what we have now.
Imagine if a group of goldbug economists had been in charge of markets and banks when the great depression hit. Or if ma bell has been in charge of telecommunications when the Internet was invented. Or if the same GM engineers who killed the EV1 and bet on trucks were in charge when electric cars and hybrids started becoming popular.
Technocracies don’t have a way to change perspectives. You get all the bad parts of a bureaucratic democratic Republic, and none of the way to short circuit bloody revolutions that makes democracies the least-bad option. You might as well just go back to monarchies – at least for those, there was a person who could be almost impartial when it comes time to decide if old ways need to change.
I agree experts can be wrong and have been wrong many times throughout history.
I can also see the concerns for maintaining the status quo.
What I’m thinking of is a less extreme variant of technocracy, where academic organizations, think tanks, etc. nominate candidates according to their own criteria. That way the overall bar is raised while leaving the decision on who is ‘qualified’ decentralized among the public.
My issue isn’t that goldbug economists are promoting harmful policies during a depression. Some issues are complex, and people are fallible.
My issue is that tariffs are widely agreed to be harmful, yet we have tariffs wrecking the economy now. Tariffs arguably constrain people’s rights by reducing their freedom to purchase what they want at fair market prices.
Like, at the very least, we should be avoiding blatant mistakes that most experts agree on. The fact that we did, in fact, make a glaring mistake against the advice of basic economics means that something is broken with the system.
Democracy, inheritance, blood sport, etc. Technocracy would (probably) only be part of the title of a ruling system, America is a republic but also a democracy.