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.

  • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    20 hours ago

    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.