I personally think engineers' inability to understand the limitations of their own abilities and the complexity of the problems we face, as evidenced by, say, the thought that if they were in charge they could fix everything, to be a strong recommendation against such a technocracy.

Personally, I think the quality the world needs more of in its leaders today is humility. Our theories are probably wrong (an argument for conservatism in a classical sense) and we, as a group, are likely just as corruptible as any other group.

Smart engineers and scientists have a tendency to think they can fix things. This is exactly what he was talking about.

Technology is a great lever to circumvent government regulation. Technology brought us the foreclosure crisis++, but it also brought us Wikileaks. I think technologically-minded people will continue to circumvent the government using their tools, but I don't think we can be herded into a party :)

(++) Those credit-default swaps, etc need lots of technology to manage the accounting.

Maybe they they can create a "scientific" socialism. That would fix everything.

Now, that would be interesting.

I would actually vote for that kind of candidate. If Facebook and Google got behind it, and they used their marketing might, then it might just work.

That would work, 'cept they would never get elected because Joe Retardo would cry "elitist" and the rest would agree with him.

The only way to get elected in this climate is to pander endlessly to the masses and never discuss real issues at all, which is not a game that the engineers or scientists are ever going to win.