Technocratic Plimsoll Line
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Technocratic Plimsoll Line
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Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#2I 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.
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#3I 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…
> 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.
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#4"Why can't the political appointees and the technocrats be formally separated in the same way as the executive, the legislative and the judiciary? "
In the UK, this is formally the case. The Civil Service is below the line, Ministers and 'political advisers' are above it. Civil Servants are legally barred from standing for election and have a duty to be politically neutral. However for this reason the Civil Service can't " keep [the politicians] in check" because that would be antidemocratic. They are supposed to at most act as an intelligence-upgrade to the politicians.
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#5This seems to just be amateur idle musing, masquerading as political philosophy.
> the technocratic Plimsoll line phenomenon is a fact of life. As such it can become a subject of research.
Well:
1) it’s not a ‘fact of life’, as described. It’s a very simplified, Western-centric view that assumes certain things about rule of law and the nature of political accountability and maps loosely onto some organizations, yet doesn’t even manage to address the US or European systems it seems to be drawing its understanding from. In this model is the Supreme Court a technocratic or political institution?
And 2) what makes the author think this isn’t an area that has been extensively studied already? Political science has a rich literature with sophisticated work on the relationship between the administrative state, and democratic and anti democratic institutions.
Seems a little bold to just wade in and claim to have noticed a universal rule of government... was this written by a programmer?
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#6> the gripes that many Europeans have with the European Union seem to be mostly focused on the legibility rather than on the actual performance of the institution
This is so wrong, I can find you a 100 million euro of miss allocated funds, mostly in grands to technology project under the umbrella of the Horizon project.
These projects are not directly validated by members of the administration instead they pay consultants to do these work.
Politicians, bureaucrats and management consulting, it is at least 3 layers of plausible deniability.
Funny how many project I know that have an EU flag on the bottom of their website followed with, "this project was funded in part under grand proposal X", and right after that, "this project does not in any way share or from represent the opinion of the EU commission".
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#7"Why can't the political appointees and the technocrats be formally separated in the same way as the executive, the legislative and the judiciary? " In the UK, this is formally the case. The Civil Service is below the line, Ministers and 'political advisers' are above it. Civil Servants are legally barred from standing for election and have a duty to be politically neutral. However for this reason the Civil Service c…
It's also the case in the US too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_appointments_in_th...
It's pretty clearly established at each agency which positions are turned over when a new administration gains power and which are protected as non-political, and this interacts with the formal rules (e.g., you need cause to fire non-political positions but not political ones).
Perhaps the author of the post is arguing that there should be stronger checks and that in practice the political influence extends below the nominal line, but he's wrong if he thinks this is somehow ignored by statute.
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#8This seems to just be amateur idle musing, masquerading as political philosophy. > the technocratic Plimsoll line phenomenon is a fact of life. As such it can become a subject of research. Well: 1) it’s not a ‘fact of life’, as described. It’s a very simplified, Western-centric view that assumes certain things about rule of law and the nature of political accountability and maps loosely onto some organizations, yet d…
> This seems to just be amateur idle musing, masquerading as political philosophy.
This almost seems like the raison d'être for LessWrong.
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#9This kinda describes something I've always internally thought of as the "talkers-to-typers ratio" at companies I've worked at. Back in the early IT/dotcom days, the "appointee class" were primarily on their phones or in meetings, talking. The technocrats were at their computers, typing. I don't think that's as bright a red line these days, obviously, but I've still kept that name in my head and check in on the ratio every now and then when I'm taking a company's pulse or looking to join a new company.
Re: Technocratic Plimsoll Line
#10I 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…
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.