this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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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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[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (4 children)

@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.

[–] EnthusiasticNature94@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

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.

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