Is this the century of Technocracy?

The main problem of that sort of government is simply, "Who does the choosing?" Would the Science Council be some sort of self-perpetuating oligarchy? Why should I support a government in which I have no say?

Governments with large bureaucracies actually have many aspects of Technocracy. The U.S. Civil Service has a merit-based system that relies on competitive examinations and promotions based on skill and longevity. Sure it isn't perfect, but it's a far sight better than the Spoils System. And a person who remains in a position like that for a long time is probably going to be pretty good at it.

Likewise, high-ranking administrative officials in the US tend to be experts in their fields. Candidates are nominated by the President and subject to Senatorial confirmation. This is a way of making it less likely that some idiot crony will get appointed. Again, not perfect, but far better than having them choose their own successors.

edited 6th Mar '12 3:16:07 PM by Lawyerdude

The real problem is that the average citizen doesnt understand either the science or the politics. We do a lousy job of educating people to participate in public policy decisions.

Yes, and that itself is a political problem. Technocracy is a system, just as the scientific method is. It only provides for a means, but doesn't in itself provide the ends. All people should have adequate food, clothing and shelter? Great. But good luck getting the experts to agree on how to achieve those things or even how to identify them. What is "adequate"? Who pays, and how? And so on.

edited 6th Mar '12 5:25:54 PM by Lawyerdude

I'm thinking there's a big issue here between Stars, Ace of Spades and others (especially me) as to what a technocracy even is.

My vision of technocracy is just the addition of councils of experts in different departments that put out policy recommendations and the politicians take that as is. Except, in order to get people involved in that matter (ie. at least know about different policy plans), the public gets to vote on the policy plans put out by experts in a sort of pseudo-referendum and the parliament/congress makes the final decision (who are all elected representatives of society).

So we turn federal/provincial politics into something akin to municipal politics where you have councils of experts push out specific recommendations about what to do, the public weighs in and the city councillors make the final call.

We have that now. Lobbyists, executive agencies and NG Os all provide advice and information to politicians. Perhaps they should pay better attention to experts, but that's just the nature of politics.

Lobbyism isn't at all the ideal form of getting that information across, given the bribery and pandering that goes on. A lot of those lobbyists are selling outright false or harmful information. Any kind of a technocracy would involve people in actual government positions making decisions.

Lobbying runs the gamut from shady to honest. For every Jack Abramoff, there are plenty of others who do their jobs honestly and with good intentions.

I'm with you Breadloaf, but that isnt what the OP was asking for...

@ de marquis

I value your endorsement! But yeah, the OP doesn't say this at all.

@ lawyerdude

I would say that there is a difference between lobbyists and councils. The primary divide is that lobbyists could be anybody and not necessarily experts in the field, whereas the Government Councils are strictly composed of experts in the field. For instance, the Health Council is composed only of people in the medical field (doctors, nurses, hospital administrators). We have roughly 6 or 7 broad categories of government, those would be the councils. The difficulty is on agreeing upon a set of skills that is considered related to the industry.

Basically, I'm saying that "top" bureaucrats in each department field policy choices to the public as suggestions, to which the public can then weigh in upon through public forums and discussions (that may be difficult given current communication limitations of a human being) or through non-binding referendums, and then the parliament or congress makes the final call.

edited 6th Mar '12 5:58:16 PM by breadloaf

I'm not sure how efficient that would be, but then we have votes on things like that Proposition 8. So I guess they'd handle it like that? It'd be work to get out the information on most of those issues though. That's probably no surprise. Not sure if that's ever been done on the national scale.

What the OP is asking for is silly given that the US's government, as well as that of Canada and most other Western countries, is a lot more stable than all the bitching here in T Vtropes would seem to imply, and thus unlikely to dramatically restructure any governments like the OP suggests.

edited 6th Mar '12 6:01:02 PM by AceofSpades

The difference between a "lobbyist" and an "expert" is in their vested interests. A lobbyist is advocating for a particular policy or position, an expert is simply supporting well-informed policy decisions.

Look, even with these councils, there are still going to be lobbyists. But "experts" in this case is being implied as also being government officials that are making policy decisions. Given the way the US Congress is structured, they're likely going to be Congress men, hopefully also advised strongly by outside sources.

Well the reason I also forward my concept of technocracy is that it isn't significant change from our current running. I realise that having to vote on policies like that is difficult, which is why I'm somewhat apprehensive about it, but I think it's more like "I publicly declare that this is the policy plans that are wise to do" by the top bureaucrats. Then the public can weigh in, perhaps by voicing concerns or something (as individuals only, or by gathering signatures), or voice support for particular policies. The voting doesn't have to be done immediately, I was picturing more like a months long open process (afterall, policy plans aren't exactly blazing fast decisions in the first place) and people log their support or disdain (digg-style) for policies over time as they study it.

There would be issues with the voting system (ie. keeping confidentiality if you're capable of changing your vote throughout the time period but that's more of a software cryptology problem) but I think that might be better than a straight up referendum. One person, one vote, and it'd likely be some kind of electronic thing.

But, yeah there would still probably be lobbyists trying to game the system, but the people with the biggest voices would be the top bureaucrats and everyone would be discussing their plans, their credentials and their backgrounds, making the voice of pure politicians that much more science-edged or fact-based. I should hope (though it's not going to be universally true) that if say a politician suggested making subways but the experts say that light rail makes more sense, then the public weighs in and goes "Yeah I think that light rails are better", then the City Council makes a final call and goes "Experts and public says light rail, we go with light rail".

edited 6th Mar '12 6:15:32 PM by breadloaf

If we are talking about building such a system from the ground up, then let's talk hypothetically.

What I would do is delegate areas of policy making to panels of experts elected by their peers in the field. So the education council would be made up of teachers chosen teachers.

If it's going to be done that way, I'd want a term limit on such positions. Good old boy systems are hard enough to combat and I wouldn't want someone getting a position like that potentially for life.

So each member serves a single fixed term, perhaps? I would give them relatively long terms, like 8 years at least.

It's either that, or the top positions (however they are currently decided, one hopes through merit-based reviews) simply are putting forward several plans (5-year, 10-year plans) or modifications to the current plan, into the public and have people think about it and choose. Canadian senators serve for life but some of them are actually pretty good people.

Keeping metrics, measuring performance, maintaining a long-term analysis (versus short-term gains) allows you to judge the success of policies (or at the very least, they don't seem to negatively impact the success much). I would take issue with people putting in policies to play to metrics, versus simply using metrics to judge the success of policies. That's a major problem I do have with metrics where people tend to abuse them the instant they are brought in.

edited 6th Mar '12 7:46:42 PM by breadloaf

"...What I would do is delegate areas of policy making to panels of experts elected by their peers in the field. So the education council would be made up of teachers chosen teachers..."

Thank you for your endorsement of my idea! Although it's easy to miss in that wall of text I posted: "...The members of each panel shall serve for any number of two years terms, provided they are non-consecutive."

I don't like the idea of short non-consecutive terms. Mainly they wouldn't give the office holder enough time to learn how to do the job well, but also having such a high turnover would make the body far more susceptible to short-term pressures or gain rather than long-term planning.

I would prefer having part of the membership rotate on a regular basis. For example, the US Senate has 1/3 of its membership up for election every 2 years. A council of that sort could have a similar rule, such as every member serves one 10 year term, and 1/5 of the members are elected every two years. That way there is a mix of established senior members and a new crop of up and comers, to balance out the need for regular renewal with an insulation from short-term pressure.

If we educate enough of the people well enough, we can keep popular representation. Popular representation is a nice thing to have.

And that's great, but lobbying tends to favor large sums of money over honesty, and large sums of money tend to favor backstabbing and backroom deals over honesty.

I agree that popular representation is nice thing to have, but educating people is impossible. It is possible to educate public on big issues, but at most it is 2-3 important issues.

one ordinary man can not possibly asked to pay attention to environment, poverty, foreign policy, education, infrastructure, gov budget, pension, law enforcement, privacy, copyrights, LGBT issues, military procurement, taxation, new technological trends, housing, health, etc.

It is too much burden. even politician who get paid for it, usually have 2-3 pet issues that they pay attention and depending on "party line" for the rest. Modern society is too much complicated to be run without specialist at some degree.

The short non-consecutive terms are for advisors who only need to know their field. The bureaucrats they advise have normal terms. High rotation ensures that the widest possible range of views are made available, and minimizes the chance of relationships developing that could affect an unbiased judgement.

I wouldn't mind rotating positions for the political level that sits on top of the experts but I do find issues with short terms for the actual experts. Your slew of experts usually last a whole generation if not longer before the next band comes into play. I think it less important that we rotate them and more important to be able to accurately measure performance and continually make performance analysis more accurate.

OK, so who measures performance and who decides the advice they listen to?