Why technocracy is the best governement (in my opinion)

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I am not sure that technocracy has been associated with that group. Usually most people who talk about "technocracy" are actually on the extreme left and want some semi-socialist system.

I am not sure that Friedman's ideas being similar to Austrian economics says anything. Methodologically the two camps actually hate each other, and that's going to be the real issue that judges whether things are "scientific laws".

Friedman wasn't a disciple of Friedrich Hayek, but rather the two men had very different perspectives on most things. This can be seen in the difference between Hayekian monetary theory which held to the Austrian business cycle, and Friedman's monetarism, which held to a need to stabilize the money supply using a central bank. It also can be seen in various Hayekian writings on economic methodology and Friedman's essay called "The Methodology of Positive Economics". (Note: I am not going to deny that the men had some influence on each other, either, so don't shove me into that position.)

I think most academic economists actually appreciate Milton Friedman's work. While many of his ideas are not held as highly as they used to be, to regard Friedman as a cultist is an insult to thinking economists. Even to regard Hayek as a cultist is an insult to thinking economists. Why not just call Ronald Coase a madman while you are at it?

That's what the people are suppose to do.

And accountability and transparency aid this. It isn't guardians all the way down.

The place of technocrats is in the public service.

No person can possibly hope to have a command of all of the issues upon which government must act in a modern, sophisticated society. But a group of people can hope to use the talents of specialists in seeking to find a best course of action, balancing off the competing demands of different sectors within government, each of which is reliant upon its own technocrats.

You must not make the mistake of equating political leadership with government. The political leadership in the legislature and at the head of the executive is not the entirety of government, they are the policy making authority at the head of government, but the implementation of policy is a technocratic function delivered by the public service.

The Public Service requires politically accountable leadership.

I support an Aspocracy, because in matters of governance ration trumps emotion.

Hrm... I can see it now... emails selling Asperger Dx's instead of blue V-pills and university degrees.

"Do you want a chance to rule the world? Get your AS Dx now, for just 39.99"

What we need in power is not specialists, specialists tend to get a narrow vision outisde their domains. What we need is peoples with broad and global perspectives who take decisions by taking account the point of views of many specialists.

Though arguably we have reached the point where it is becoming more unnecessary to have supreme leaders and instead have systems managed through the best available information. These specialists wouldn't so much be rulers as just doing the part computers can't do yet until governance is completely automatic.

However either a clear base philosophy would have to be forged for it to work apon, or it'd just follow capitalism or whatever system already exists, which in turn would shift government to be run by companies.

Cue dystopian cyberpunk scene.

Last edited by Asmodeus on 14 Jul 2010, 4:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

What we have in power and generalist incompetent and mendacious morals. Base knaves who live on lies and stupidity which is bound to happen in a country with a stupid electorate which can be convinced up is down and black is white.

ruveyn

Whereas engineers and other scientists are pure of heart and, as the BP technicians can testify, never are subject to incompetent judgment.

Lets humour this idea. Lets say it could work. It'd be like the world of Star Trek. All our war and greed and such in the past, the worlds decisions made with scientific rigour ,and a resource based economy.



But how would this come about? How would we get there?
The Venus project want a similar future, though without technical elitism, and here's their plan:
http://www.thevenusproject.com/the-venu ... -proposals
But beyond "make a book and a film about it", it peters off into vague concepts like "Transcending the artificial boundaries that currently and arbitrarily separate people." and "Encouraging the widest range of creativity and incentive toward constructive endeavour"., and intends to somehow test this vague stuff in some "experimental research city", somehow...

The best deal would be to have Klaatu's robot GORT (from the 1951 original movie) rule over us. We would be allowed to do anything we wanted except rob, kill, rape and commit fraud.

ruveyn

This sounds the most reasonable to me. Like they say, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Technocrats are naturally hammers. They are well-placed in their narrow public domains like the EPA, OSHA, FDA. I want technocrats to be really obsessive and fussy about emissions, dangerous machinery and prescription drugs. But it would e a mistake to push them out of their narrow domains and into places (like the presidency!) where they can make damaging changes that they never even consider because it is outside their usual focus.

I have no doubt that lots of technocrats are smart. They have to be in order to understand the intricacies of their field. But if smart is the only thing that matters, it's a very short distance to trampling on the rights of "stupid" people because they are standing in the way of the technocrats' Grand Vision.

Latin America in the 1990s, the decade known there as the Lost Decade, was ruled by what was described in the western media as "technocrats" whose job it was to apply the so called immutable scientifically-devised neoliberal prescriptions on their unwilling peoples. Celebrated was the idea to separate decision-making from the people as much as possible, that this is a "government of experts", that force should be used against those who opposed, that those opposed were part of the evil Latin American "curse" of "populists" and "caudillos" as Hugo Chavez for instance is being portrayed.

Right, and there is an ongoing technocracy movement that existed historically, and that still exists in the vast world of the internet, which is characterized by its view that economics is more like a physical science, that social planning should be done by engineers, and that the price system would eventually fail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

Groups like this still exist, as noted from the web-link on this page to a particular group.

There are even modern versions of this kind of idea that have emerged, such as the Zeitgeist project, which is very much technocratic in aims and in its thinking structure.

Now, it may be the case that neoliberals have been called technocrats, but then again, Keynesians have also gotten the label as well, which in their case makes a good bit of sense.

That's what we have now. When we elect a president, we're electing someone we hope will choose a good set of advisors and then make decisions based on their advice wisely.

And obviously when the advisors are the same crooks that caused the mess, as in the current administration, you are shi t out of luck.