Technocrats and Democrats
Commentary from Nathan Smith (whose opinions are germane to this blog as he is a friend of Tom's):
"I think the Kyoto process highlights the disturbing implications for democratic politics of environmentalism, particularly in the case of global warming, which inevitably sets a trend towards global technocracy. The trouble is: can we trust the technocrats? Why should we dethrone kings and emperors and then trust enviro-technocrats?"
This is a specific example of a broader difficulty regarding democratic decision-making. It has often been noted that consensus of belief does not dictate physical fact. A majority of Americans believe the humanity has been visited by extraterrestrials, but I think most would not regard this in itself as evidence that flying saucers are zipping about. Likewise do most seem to believe the Bible is literally true - though according to the statistics, a large portion of them would also somehow have to believe in evolution, with which biblical literalism is not readily compatible.
How is it that scientific truths that most laymen do not accept get taught in schools? It's because we live in the original democratic technocracy - the republic. Almost all our laws are made by lawmakers. That's pretty much the entire job - making laws. Now, most of them are politicians (as opposed to statesmen) as well, but it's a de facto not de jure requirement.
Why don't we just vote on things ourselves? Well, the truth, is, we're not very informed. I consider myself very well informed compared to the average person, but you can guarantee that lawmakers know lawmaking a whole lot better than I ever will. I might be able to bend a certain portion of my free time to studying the crafting, arguing, and negotiation of laws, but it's their whole profession (at least ostensibly).
Likewise I'm not an environmental scientist or a professional economist or a tenured professor of philosophy. I have interests and a propensity for research that put me in the Nth percentile of knowledge for the pertinent fields, but all of that 'expertise' essentially qualifies me to make a good guess at which experts to trust. Likewise in the early days of the USA people elected people to office with reputations such that they could reasonably be trusted to make good decisions for constituents who were too busy growing food or hammering iron to examine the minutia.
Trust that I want Greenspan setting the interest rates rather than for the population at large to vote on them.
But technocracy didn't work at all well for even the best communist state, and even elsewhere it has a spotty history. France's nuclear industry is a technocratic triumph of efficiency, but one need not search far for failures - such as the particular form of the Kyoto protocols.
So technocracy is not a panacea, but neither should the word carry a pejorative ring
"I think the Kyoto process highlights the disturbing implications for democratic politics of environmentalism, particularly in the case of global warming, which inevitably sets a trend towards global technocracy. The trouble is: can we trust the technocrats? Why should we dethrone kings and emperors and then trust enviro-technocrats?"
This is a specific example of a broader difficulty regarding democratic decision-making. It has often been noted that consensus of belief does not dictate physical fact. A majority of Americans believe the humanity has been visited by extraterrestrials, but I think most would not regard this in itself as evidence that flying saucers are zipping about. Likewise do most seem to believe the Bible is literally true - though according to the statistics, a large portion of them would also somehow have to believe in evolution, with which biblical literalism is not readily compatible.
How is it that scientific truths that most laymen do not accept get taught in schools? It's because we live in the original democratic technocracy - the republic. Almost all our laws are made by lawmakers. That's pretty much the entire job - making laws. Now, most of them are politicians (as opposed to statesmen) as well, but it's a de facto not de jure requirement.
Why don't we just vote on things ourselves? Well, the truth, is, we're not very informed. I consider myself very well informed compared to the average person, but you can guarantee that lawmakers know lawmaking a whole lot better than I ever will. I might be able to bend a certain portion of my free time to studying the crafting, arguing, and negotiation of laws, but it's their whole profession (at least ostensibly).
Likewise I'm not an environmental scientist or a professional economist or a tenured professor of philosophy. I have interests and a propensity for research that put me in the Nth percentile of knowledge for the pertinent fields, but all of that 'expertise' essentially qualifies me to make a good guess at which experts to trust. Likewise in the early days of the USA people elected people to office with reputations such that they could reasonably be trusted to make good decisions for constituents who were too busy growing food or hammering iron to examine the minutia.
Trust that I want Greenspan setting the interest rates rather than for the population at large to vote on them.
But technocracy didn't work at all well for even the best communist state, and even elsewhere it has a spotty history. France's nuclear industry is a technocratic triumph of efficiency, but one need not search far for failures - such as the particular form of the Kyoto protocols.
So technocracy is not a panacea, but neither should the word carry a pejorative ring
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home