What do you guys think of this concept? Definition: "The concept of a technocracy remains mostly hypothetical, though some nations have been considered as such in the sense of being governed primarily by technical experts in various fields of governmental decision making. A technocrat has come to mean either 'a member of a powerful technical elite', or 'someone who advocates the supremacy of technical experts'.[1][2][3] Scientists, engineers, and technologists examples include these technologists who have knowledge, expertise, or skills, would compose the governing body, instead of politicians, businesspeople, and economists.[4] In a technocracy, decision makers would be selected based upon how knowledgeable and skillful they are in their field."
Plato had a somewhat similar idea with philosopher-kings I guess. In theory it sounds like a very good method of government, if not the best, but I'm sceptical as to how much better it would be. Firstly, just because they're technocrats doesn't mean they agree with each other; there's a saying, for instance, "line up all the economists end to end and you still wouldn't get any agreement". So you could still get disagreement in the governing body. Also, technocrats are still human- subject to power struggles and quite possibly corruption- not to mention the fact that many policy issues, such as what the ideal form of society is or what a nation should value the most are abstract issues with very little objective quality, so to what extent could technocrats do everything for a society? Sometimes it's not so much about how to achieve the goals as what the goals are in the first place that's the issue. Finally at the extreme end of technocracy I think you'd have a dangerous centralisation of power. Look what happened in the various Communist regimes throughout history- centrally planned economies which buckled, atrocities committed in the name of the vanguard parties achieving communist societies. Would relentless objectivity compromise human rights, how to pick the technocrats, how to settle disputes between them, how to make them accountable on any level, how to check their influence, how to control their self-interests. How much democracy/power would you sacrifice to people who are knowledgable yes but still error-prone and self-interested to a certain extent like anyone else? We need more technocracy, I'd agree with that, but a purely technocratic system raises many doubts, and I wonder if it would really be substantially better than what we have now. Better to learn how to delegate to experts for appropriate policies than remove all democracy in favour of technocrats.
Not sure lol... this is also in the wiki: "Some uses of the word technocracy refer to a form of meritocracy, a system where the "most qualified" and those who decide the validity of qualifications are the same people. Other applications have been described as not being an oligarchic human group of controllers, but rather administration by discipline-specific science, ostensibly without the influence of special interest groups. The word technocracy has also been used to indicate any kind of management or administration by specialized experts ('technocrats') in any field, not just physical science, and the adjective 'technocratic' has been used to describe governments that include non-elected professionals at a ministerial level." ---------- Post added 22nd Apr 2014 at 08:03 PM ---------- I would not be for that. Can you not still have democracy where the leaders are technocrats, but free speech and debate are still allowed?
Here in Chile, the word technocrat usually has a derogatory connotation, and is used on politicians, mainly economists, who have championed or implemented economic policies that seek improvements in macroeconomic numbers at the expense of social wellfare and equality. I don't know if it relates to the original meaning of the term or got its current meaning for the behavior of technocrats (in the sense exposed by the OP of this thread) in the past.
It raises the debate as to how you pick the technocrats. I guess you could have (mostly) democratically elected technocrats, if you set up a framework where experts can only run for election for a post in their field. But then you get the argument that the wider public can't be trusted to put technocrats in office because they don't know enough or are too short-sighted to make the decisions which the technocrats make. Plus, you have the problem of who decides who is a technocrat in what and what criteria there are. It wouldn't be support of the people so much, it would be their technical ability and ability to solve problems. I just skimmed the wiki article on it, that says "Technical and leadership skills would be selected on the basis of specialised knowledge and performance, rather than democratic election by those without such knowledge or skill deemed necessary". If it was taken to mean literally rule by the experts, then you could argue only the experts should get a vote, or have more heavily weighted votes at least, since under technocracy they are deemed to have more value -being experts- than non-experts. Here in the EU technocrat's also a generally pejorative term, politicians like Mario Monti, who was installed as Italian PM without an election by the EU (as well as many in his cabinet), are generally lumped with the word technocrat. The word's often associated with non-democratic practice here.
