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.
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You can have a somewhat non-corrupt technocracy still make poor decisions that don’t serve the public’s interest.
For instance, a lot of the mid century highways in the USA was planned, designed, and built by technocrats.
Yeah, I agree.
Poor decisions still happen, but this would be a nice safeguard to lessen the severity and frequency of such poor decisions.
Most economists today would not support a tariff and subsequently wreck the economy.
By definition, most political problem don’t have a clear/unique good solution. You want to build more housing ? But how do you do-it ? Even on pretty technical topic like fire-safety, where do you set the balance between blocking various industries with heavy procedure and ignoring all safety practices for the sake of efficiency ?. Look at topic like tobacco and drugs ? Do you want to ban them because it’s unhealthy ? Or allow them on the name of personal freedom ? Depending who look at the questions, it’s going to change a lot.
You can still have a technocratic system that allows moral weights to be ‘baked into’ it.
For example, currently, in some states, judges are elected. The people decide what kinds of judges align with their values.
However, most of these states require judges to have a law degree to run, which is technocratic—you cannot run for a judge position without graduating from law school (and passing the bar in some states) first.
Sure, there are no good solutions and a vast amount of conflicting legal theories on how to address or interpret certain things, but as a whole, the judicial system is at least more grounded in some understanding of the law rather than random individuals who were able to market their way into judicial power.
I imagine a similar thing would happen for other issues.
It may be described as that on paper, but in our reality what it seems to translate into is the tech CEOs making policy decisions, and all those that have actually been proposed are just regulation cuts that benefit their particularly company or industry and actively harm everyone else. So, yeah, thats bad.
Yeah, I agree that’s an issue. In a way, Americans are experiencing that live, today.
What about a variant of technocracy that accounts for conflicts of interest?
I dont believe in hierarchy, so you lose me there. Decentralized government with a centralized education system is probably a good combination abstractly speaking.
Valid. Why do you think education should be the exception to decentralization?
We’ve seen decentralized education and it tends to have problems with resourcing and economies of scale, and content policies get easily hijacked by loud people with personal vendettas.
Pretty much, a lot of decentralization can have this problem. But our current state speaks plainly against centralization and even ours was supposed to be separated to a degree.
That would be something like an AI technocracy where the AI owns itself and is considered as a living human being for all intents and purposes.
If the AI’s continued existence was predicated on them ruling fairly and maximizing happiness without causing any kind of like asimovian technocratic exterminations, then you might have a chance at something working like that.
The problem is the people who think they are smart enough to pull off such a specific combination of events to make something like that possible are not smart enough to pull it off and will kill us all if given the opportunity.
That would be the ideal, but even without AI, you can still have a society that is more technocratic-leaning than it is now. It’s not like technocracies were historically impossible before AI existed.
I agree about the problem you mentioned. I would not trust someone who is proposing their AI will magically fix all of society’s problems.
Who decides what the relevant skills are?
Who gets to decide social justice issues? Cops or advocates?
Edit: what about climate policy? big Oil? Or climate people?
Yeah, this is probably the main criticism of technocracies.
I personally advocate for a more decentralized version of technocracy. I don’t really have stake in which decentralized system is best, but each decentralized system has at least some minimum bar to deter those who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing from assuming power.
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.
The American political system occasionally having a terrible choice is one of the tradeoffs for having power be changeable without bloodshed.
Because of lifetime appointments the US legal system is nearly a technocracy as you describe. It arrived at a decision in 1971 that a wide swath of the body politic was so opposed to that they essentially lost all faith the status quo. What followed was a decades long campaign to shift that pseudo-technocracy. Not a bloody insurrection.
You and I may disagree with their position, and we both dislike some of the results of their movement, but the worth of a government form is how well it responds to such discontent.
I don’t think you’ll get any disagreement that the current administration is exposing some flaws in the American political system. But the potential fixes for those flaws are numerous, while a brand new system as you propose would have its own expected and unexpected flaws.
Let’s talk about those goldbugs, since anything else urges trolls to show up. If they’re in power what stops them from declaring that their opponents are “fake” economists? How would we remove them from power?
There’s multiple ways to achieve the goals of a technocracy.
I agree with your criticism, but you’re criticizing a more extreme, centralized form of technocracy. I have criticisms of direct democracy, but I wouldn’t conclude all democratic systems are bad because of the most extreme version.
And democracy and technocracy aren’t mutually exclusive, either.
For the legal example, some states hold elections for their judges, and most require a law degree. This sets some minimum to be a judge in those areas, which is technocratic.
What if a judge claims other judges are fake? Well, the people can evaluate those claims and vote accordingly.
But at least you don’t have some unhinged individual with no understanding of the law abusing their judicial powers.
I can’t really speak to the bloodshed since I don’t know which electoral process you’re criticizing, but technocracies don’t need bloodshed, no.
For your goldbug criticism, here’s one potential example (out of many, many possible systems) that could resolve it: Academic and think tank organizations stake their reputation by nominating economists, and then the people vote on them.
Let’s say the Mises Institute nominates a goldbug economist. I highly doubt enough people would vote for them vs all the other candidates by organizations like the American Economic Association, etc. And if they do get elected, whatever chaos that ensues would harm not only the candidate’s reputation, but the Mises Institute’s reputation. People would vote them out and ignore candidates from the Mises Institute.
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.
What’s wrong is that definitions don’t mean anything these days. Maybe ever. Technocracy now refers to oligarchy but with tech CEOs specifically. I would also prefer a system where there are technical requirements before you when get the chance to try to get power.
I appreciate you agreeing with some technical requirements, but I want some perspective for why it’s not a good idea. It seems like we’re in agreement, though.
Its not a good idea because those requirements must be drafted by people, which tend to be the people in power. Historically, this ends in hand crafted requirements to get the people they want instead of the best people for the job. We also dont really require that. Plenty can be accomplished with flawed people in roles so long as those flaws dont override their responsibilities to their constituents. We do it at our jobs every day. It just so happens a flawed person in their role has the ability to control people’s lives. Which is why extremely centralized modes of power suck absolute ass.
Yeah, I actually agree with you there. I don’t like an extreme form of technocracy where some individuals dictate who is qualified to rule.
In practice, what I’m thinking of is socially delegating the requirements. Have various organizations dictate their own standards, and let them nominate the candidates.
Sure, one could just make their own jank Tariff Society and nominate their own pro-tariff candidates for economic policy, but the people would see that and vote accordingly. The reputation of the organization would be self-regulating in a decentralized way without the extremely centralized power issues you mentioned. I highly doubt a candidate nominated by the Tariff Society would stand a chance against a candidate nominated by the American Economics Association, for example.
A decentralized coalition government would probably be the sweet spot for now. Anything based on merit or qualifications or whatever will just be seized by people with agendas or will be designed with a bias to begin with. Technological based ones will just be ruled by the people with the technology. Our only viable option right now are liberal democracies that actually invest in their populace’s education and electoral information. I’ve grown more towards anarchism in reality, as I no longer believe people can be trusted in a post-truth society. Even the EU is clamping down on climate protestors. Its authoritarianism all the way down in one way or another.
I don’t trust people either. 😭 I had no idea about the EU vs climate protestors. That’s wild.
Knowledge being the key to power, I can’t say I’m inherantly against it (though power in and of itself is a risk).
The problem of course is, generally speaking… all fields run as a business under capitalism, and thus the top of them is generally the person who runs the business side.
IE I would love for knowledgable doctors to be in charge of healthcare decisions… unfortunately in practice what we get is hospital CEOs, health insurance executives etc… That specialize in how to help extract money from sick people… and not prioritize helping people not get sick, and making sure everyone can be treated if they are.
I see where you’re coming from, but I mean, looking at the current president, we’re already living your hypothetical.
There are two levels of problems with a technocracy.
The first is a problem that’s common to all hierarchical systems, entirely regardless of their specific nature. They will, each and all, sooner or later come to be dominated by people who hold the positions they hold solely because they most lust for those positions and are most willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to gain and hold them.
It makes no difference what sort of limitations or stipulations might be in place - if there is a position that holds authority over others, it will eventually come to be held by the most vicious and conniving bastard in the organization, because they will be willing and able to go to lengths to which nobody else will go.
The second problem with a technocracy is ancillary to the first, and common to all hierarchical systems that focus on some specific philosophy or identity. The positions of power will still come to be held by the most determined psychopaths, but unlike in a more general system, the abusers in power will have an additional claim to legitimacy by paying lip service to the ideal. They’re generally able to act even more destructively than other psychopaths, since they can hide their malevolence behind the philosophy or identity both before and after the fact.
Or more simply - problem 1 is that you end up with psychopathic assholes, and problem 2 is that you end up with psychopathic assholes who have even more power than your run-of-the-mill psychopathic assholes because, after all, they’re experts.
Yeah, any hierarchical system is susceptible to abuse.
In contrast to the current system, do you think a technocracy would be more vulnerable to these problems?
I’m also interested in hearing your proposal for a non-hierarchical system. I’ve wanted to look at some decentralized systems (and ironically, Lemmy is sort of like that), but I haven’t really found anything that seems promising.
I think a technocracy would initially be relatively better, but would rapidly decline and likely end up worse.
Initially, there would be some significant number of genuinely sincere people who would be well-positioned to move into tge positions of power, and the requirement of technical expertisecwould eliminateca lot of the scumbags.
Over time though, the scumbags would figure out which hoops they needed to jump through in order to qualify for office, then they’d start co-opting that system, so that eventually, well-connected scumbags would, if anything, actually have an easier time of obtaining the necessary credentials than actual experts would.
I have no proposal for a non-hierarchical system because that’s the exact sort of collective thinking that leads to hierarchical systems.
A non-hierarchical system can’t be implemented. Rather it can only be the result ofvall the paticipants in a ststem (or vlosecenough as makes no meaningful difference) butting out of each other’s decisions.
At that point, it will and can only take whatever form it takes - whatever might the manifestation of the unconstrained decisions of all of the participants.
This is a really good response. Thank you.
I think we can have both the benefits of democracy being decentralized and resistant to systemic manipulation, and of technocracy having some minimum bar to deter ignorant individuals from harming society. There are trade-offs for sure, but currently, we the people ultimately voted for someone who openly said he’d impose tariffs (among other things).
One potential example (among many, many possibilities) is a system where academic organizations and think tanks stake their reputation to nominate candidates, and then the people vote on them.
For example, let’s say the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) nominates a pro-tariff candidate to manage economic policy. And then let’s say the people end up voting for them. After the tariffs wreck the economy, the reputation of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) will deteriorate considerably. In the next election, the people will vote the candidate out and ignore future EPI nominations.
@jayemar already gave a valid counterpoint, about how to select the technocrats in the first place. But let’s suppose we did somehow select the best and brightest of their fields. The next problem is that life is messy, and there often isn’t a single answer or criteria which determines what is in the public interest.
Btw, for everyone’s benefit, J-PAL is the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, with branches covering different parts of the world, since policies on addressing poverty necessarily differ depending on local circumstances. They might be described as a research institute or maybe a think tank, as they advocate for more-effective solutions to poverty and give advice on how to do that.
Poverty, as an objective, can be roughly distilled into bringing everyone above some numerical economic figure. There may be different methods that bring people out of poverty, but it’s fairly straightforward to assess the effectiveness of those solutions, by seeing how many people exit poverty and how much the solution costs.
Now take something like – to stay with economics – management of the central bank. The USA central bank (The Federal Reserve) was created with a dual mandate, which means they manage the currency with care to: 1) not let inflation run amok, and 2) keep USA unemployment low. The dual mandate is tricky because one tends to begat the other. So when both strike, what should a technocrat do? Sacrifice one goal short-term to achieve the other long-term? Try attacking both but perhaps fail at either?
Such choices are not straight yes/no or go/no-go questions, but are rightfully questions of policy and judgement. Is it fine to sell 10% of parkland for resource extraction if it will iron-clad guarantee the remaining 90% is protected as wilderness for time immemorial? How about 25%? 60%?
Subject matter experts (SMEs) are excellent at their craft, but asking them to write public policy – even with help from other SMEs – won’t address the fuzzy dilemmas that absolutely arise in governance.
In a democratic republic, voters choose not only the politician with views they agree with, but also are subscribing to that politician’s sense of judgement for all of life’s unknowns. Sometimes this goes well, sometimes that trust is misplaced. Although it’s imperfect, this system can answer the fuzzy dilemmas which technocracies cannot.
To be clear, J-PAL addresses a variety of issues outside of poverty, and some are even fuzzy, like women’s empowerment.
I agree that inflation and unemployment are mutually exclusive when it comes to managing the central bank. However, is it really that much different from other problems with constraints? It’s not like an engineer just abandons a project and leave it up to ‘judgment’ - they find optimal ranges to adjust the dials to.
If your ultimate goal is to have more prosperity (in terms of employment and prices), the central bank is simply one of many tools that can affect this (and a pretty constrained one at that). You’d be better off looking at additional tools at your disposal, such as evidence-based vocational training programs, and scaling them nationwide.
I don’t know why you were downvoted. I really appreciate how thorough you were and the links you provided.
I’m still drafting a reply. I just think it’s weird you got downvoted.
I don’t think I was? As a rule, I always remove the automatic +1 for my own comment, since I prefer to start the count from zero.
Ah, my bad. Well, thank you for your well thought out response.
