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I don't think the point here is wrong, but I think the line that is being drawn between "technocrats" and "political appointees" is too sharp. The article make

I don't think the point here is wrong, but I think the line that is being drawn between "technocrats" and "political appointees" is too sharp. The article makes the point that sometimes a political appointment may be made on an aptitude basis rather than a social basis, so we should lump them together. But this is just a problem of trying to impose a taxonomy on reality, which is not going to be productive. The vast majority of technocrats in government service are political appointees chosen for their domain expertise. As an example, the board of the Federal Reserve consists entirely of subject matter experts, and saying that they are not technocrats when the very substance of their job is attempting to apply technocratic solutions to economic problems. I think the overwhelming majority of people (although not me) feels that the Fed is better off run by technocrats -- why would you trust, for example, a bunch of Senators with that job, when they may have no formal training or experience in economics? The argument of people like Matt Stoller that we would be vastly better off by a Fed that was run directly by a congressional committee sounds terrifying to people who imagine that the Fed is too important to be relegated to rank amateurs. But the essential observation of most anti-technocrats is that the technocrats are bad at their job. Having Congress legislate and investigate where they can, and get out of the way where they can't, is generally a more robust policy than letting them defer to subject matter experts in areas where governmental action is relevant.

wahern 5y ago
> The vast majority of technocrats in government service are political appointees chosen "Vast majority" seems like an exaggeration. But your point is exactly the first thing that came to mind, particularly when the author said that we should study the phenomenon of technocratic power. People do study it; that's how we get terms like regulatory capture.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  Yeah, that can't possibly be correct. The Department of Defense employs two million people, and literally none of them are empowered to start a war. There are a lot of experts in munitions and logistics and everything else and job is to inform and execute the decisions made by the political parts of the government. Their counterparts elsewhere in the Civil Service do the same. It seems kind of obvious to me that a democracy has to have this structure: if the technocrats were directly setting high-level policy, what would the political appointees even do? Likewise, you need more implementers than steer-era.
aww_dang 5y ago
Broadly speaking the problem with technocrats isn't always their expertise within their domain, but the ripple effects of their policies outside of their domain. The technocrat's policies might meet all of their metrics and be arguably correct within their area of expertise. Economic policies might seem sound in terms stock market metrics, but could be disastrous for consumers. Health policies might make sense from the perspective of public health metrics, but could be terrible for the economy.
Misdicorl 5y ago
> Having Congress legislate and investigate where they can, and get out of the way where they can't, is generally a more robust policy than letting them defer to subject matter experts in areas where governmental action is relevant. Isn't this exactly what the technocrat solution is? The technocrats go about their business as best they can. Congress can (and does, sometimes) intervene with new or updated laws whenever they deem the technocrats are not appropriately serving their function. The issue (in the US anyways) is really that congress has completely abdicated their duty and deferred all work to either the presidency/judiciary and/or the technocrats/bureaucrats. Eliminating/curtailing the technocrats/buraeucrats doesn't make Congress work better, it just pushes them to cede more of their power to the other branches of government and thus even further into the autocratic hellscape.
- andrewla 5y ago
  By "get out of the way where they can't" I mean that the government should simply forfeit its authority and say that this is a realm of commerce or activity where there is no need for government intervention. Not that they should "get out of the way" by creating technocratic bodies. I agree wholeheartedly that congress has completely abdicated their duty and actively refuses to wield power directly. Regarding deferring to the president, there are two approaches to that, one is to create rule-making bodies that are associated with the executive, and the other is to directly legislate to make clear what things are illegal. The former approach is flawed for many reasons, but most notably because a regulatory body will always focus its efforts on "pre-crime"; to try to guarantee that it is structurally impossible to commit a crime, rather than trying and convicting individuals or organizations with crimes. Once this process is captured, it serves only as a moat for existing players in the space, to prevent new organizations from arising that offer innovation in that space by forcing them to structure their businesses in the "industry-standard" way. And they will spend the remainder of their time trying to create structures within their realm to enforce legibility. The latter approach (laws -> enforcement) is fine. It allows discretion around the margins and forces accountability for causing harm, or, in some narrow cases, from dangerous recklessness in areas that have a great deal of potential harm in the tails.

wahern 5y ago

> The vast majority of technocrats in government service are political appointees chosen "Vast majority" seems like an exaggeration. But your point is exactly the first thing that came to mind, particularly when the author said that we should study the phenomenon of technocratic power. People do study it; that's how we get terms like regulatory capture.

mattkrause 5y ago
Yeah, that can't possibly be correct. The Department of Defense employs two million people, and literally none of them are empowered to start a war. There are a lot of experts in munitions and logistics and everything else and job is to inform and execute the decisions made by the political parts of the government. Their counterparts elsewhere in the Civil Service do the same. It seems kind of obvious to me that a democracy has to have this structure: if the technocrats were directly setting high-level policy, what would the political appointees even do? Likewise, you need more implementers than steer-era.

aww_dang 5y ago

Broadly speaking the problem with technocrats isn't always their expertise within their domain, but the ripple effects of their policies outside of their domain. The technocrat's policies might meet all of their metrics and be arguably correct within their area of expertise. Economic policies might seem sound in terms stock market metrics, but could be disastrous for consumers. Health policies might make sense from the perspective of public health metrics, but could be terrible for the economy.

Misdicorl 5y ago

> Having Congress legislate and investigate where they can, and get out of the way where they can't, is generally a more robust policy than letting them defer to subject matter experts in areas where governmental action is relevant. Isn't this exactly what the technocrat solution is? The technocrats go about their business as best they can. Congress can (and does, sometimes) intervene with new or updated laws whenever they deem the technocrats are not appropriately serving their function. The issue (in the US anyways) is really that congress has completely abdicated their duty and deferred all work to either the presidency/judiciary and/or the technocrats/bureaucrats. Eliminating/curtailing the technocrats/buraeucrats doesn't make Congress work better, it just pushes them to cede more of their power to the other branches of government and thus even further into the autocratic hellscape.

andrewla 5y ago
By "get out of the way where they can't" I mean that the government should simply forfeit its authority and say that this is a realm of commerce or activity where there is no need for government intervention. Not that they should "get out of the way" by creating technocratic bodies. I agree wholeheartedly that congress has completely abdicated their duty and actively refuses to wield power directly. Regarding deferring to the president, there are two approaches to that, one is to create rule-making bodies that are associated with the executive, and the other is to directly legislate to make clear what things are illegal. The former approach is flawed for many reasons, but most notably because a regulatory body will always focus its efforts on "pre-crime"; to try to guarantee that it is structurally impossible to commit a crime, rather than trying and convicting individuals or organizations with crimes. Once this process is captured, it serves only as a moat for existing players in the space, to prevent new organizations from arising that offer innovation in that space by forcing them to structure their businesses in the "industry-standard" way. And they will spend the remainder of their time trying to create structures within their realm to enforce legibility. The latter approach (laws -> enforcement) is fine. It allows discretion around the margins and forces accountability for causing harm, or, in some narrow cases, from dangerous recklessness in areas that have a great deal of potential harm in the tails.