EnthusiasticNature94

I don't trust people either. 😭 I had no idea about the EU vs climate protestors. That's wild.

Ah, my bad. Well, thank you for your well thought out response.

I see where you're coming from, but I mean, looking at the current president, we're already living your hypothetical.

I agree experts can be wrong and have been wrong many times throughout history.

I can also see the concerns for maintaining the status quo.

What I'm thinking of is a less extreme variant of technocracy, where academic organizations, think tanks, etc. nominate candidates according to their own criteria. That way the overall bar is raised while leaving the decision on who is 'qualified' decentralized among the public.

My issue isn't that goldbug economists are promoting harmful policies during a depression. Some issues are complex, and people are fallible.

My issue is that tariffs are widely agreed to be harmful, yet we have tariffs wrecking the economy now. Tariffs arguably constrain people's rights by reducing their freedom to purchase what they want at fair market prices.

Like, at the very least, we should be avoiding blatant mistakes that most experts agree on. The fact that we did, in fact, make a glaring mistake against the advice of basic economics means that something is broken with the system.

Yeah, I actually agree with you there. I don't like an extreme form of technocracy where some individuals dictate who is qualified to rule.

In practice, what I'm thinking of is socially delegating the requirements. Have various organizations dictate their own standards, and let them nominate the candidates.

Sure, one could just make their own jank Tariff Society and nominate their own pro-tariff candidates for economic policy, but the people would see that and vote accordingly. The reputation of the organization would be self-regulating in a decentralized way without the extremely centralized power issues you mentioned. I highly doubt a candidate nominated by the Tariff Society would stand a chance against a candidate nominated by the American Economics Association, for example.

Valid. Why do you think education should be the exception to decentralization?

That would be the ideal, but even without AI, you can still have a society that is more technocratic-leaning than it is now. It's not like technocracies were historically impossible before AI existed.

I agree about the problem you mentioned. I would not trust someone who is proposing their AI will magically fix all of society's problems.

To be clear, J-PAL addresses a variety of issues outside of poverty, and some are even fuzzy, like women's empowerment.

I agree that inflation and unemployment are mutually exclusive when it comes to managing the central bank. However, is it really that much different from other problems with constraints? It's not like an engineer just abandons a project and leave it up to 'judgment' - they find optimal ranges to adjust the dials to.

If your ultimate goal is to have more prosperity (in terms of employment and prices), the central bank is simply one of many tools that can affect this (and a pretty constrained one at that). You'd be better off looking at additional tools at your disposal, such as evidence-based vocational training programs, and scaling them nationwide.

Yeah, any hierarchical system is susceptible to abuse.

In contrast to the current system, do you think a technocracy would be more vulnerable to these problems?

I'm also interested in hearing your proposal for a non-hierarchical system. I've wanted to look at some decentralized systems (and ironically, Lemmy is sort of like that), but I haven't really found anything that seems promising.

I appreciate you agreeing with some technical requirements, but I want some perspective for why it's not a good idea. It seems like we're in agreement, though.

I don't know why you were downvoted. I really appreciate how thorough you were and the links you provided.

I'm still drafting a reply. I just think it's weird you got downvoted.

Yeah, it's sort of a chicken before the egg problem - you need an expert to identify one. The potential for echo chambers is there.

In practice, though, wouldn't it be similar to how any other role is filled?

Here's one criterion: Outcomes. What is their track record? Have they made meaningful contributions that solve complex problems? I don't need an intimate knowledge of carpentry to see that a contractor's reviews have photos of great (or not so great) work.

The actual electoral process could be a variety of approaches, and all have their weaknesses, but most would be 'less wrong' than the current system.

Hardly any economist would agree with a tariff, yet here we are.

I don't have a stake in whether it's a nomination system by academic organizations, or some other minimum bar, or whether the process is still ultimately democratic, etc. One can theorycraft all kinds of technocratic electoral systems and their weaknesses, but I'm gonna need some convincing that any systems' flaws are worse than what we have now.