I read about this before. I do believe there is some merit in it. I work for a company that has traditionally moved engineers into management and I can say it has worked very well. That said, a government is not a corporation and there are human aspects that may be overlooked by some engineers. Or that would at least be some people’s concern.
The worst bosses I’ve ever had were highly technical people put into those roles because they were perceived to be the best with those skills. There was repeatedly little-to-no regard for their soft skills and working for those people was miserable.
The thing about technocracy is that there need to be human concerns and philosophies driving whatever scientifically-driven policy-making it’s being done.
Do it wrong and that’s how we end up with eugenics. It’s incredibly easy to justify horrible stuff using metrics, the essential questions that cannot be overlooked is what metrics ought to be valued and why, and science is not the right method to make the ultimate judgement of what the values of a society ought to be.
Please for the love of the gods don’t put engineers in charge of anything but engineering projects. You want someone to decide about bridges, dams, power, etc?We’re your people. You want someone do decide what rights people should have or economic policy? Keep us the fuck away we’re basically mad scientists.
The point is not putting engineers in charge of everything. Engineers can make policy on infrastructure. Economists can make policy on the economy and sociologists can make policy on social issues. The point is to stop putting people in charge because they belong to party X or are really good friends with person Y.
Technocrats are just policy wonks who have more money to give to Patreon
Scientists would end up causing a bigger genocide than a despotic politician could ever dream of. King, CEO, a farmer or a baker, whoever is put in charge should have to suffer the consequences of their failures too instead of being allowed to quietly shuffle off to cushy speaking gigs at the expense of wider society. Bring back decimations and obligatory seppuku for politicians, economists, central bankers and other policy makers I say. Even if it proves worse than the current regime in place, at least it will be an entertaining slide to hell.
I personally dream of a technocratic demarchy model of governance where decision makers are chosen randomly from a pool of qualified professionals who opt-in for a given field.
