This is what happens in a world where “experts” are merely those with “certifications at the expert level” and not people with actual knowledge and experience.

That kind of world is an inevitable outcome of large bureaucracies and over-reliance on qualifications. You don’t just get idiocracy, you get Untruths and policies oriented around expanding the bureaucracy rather than addressing problems. See also: Lysenkoism in the USSR, EU’s model of funding startups through grants.

I honestly think this one of the things the US does way, way better than other developed countries. We pay a price in cronyism and corruption, but we actually let industry experts with real experience both advise on policy and take key government positions. We don’t pretend you need a PhD in X to be knowledgeable about X to nearly the same extent as Canada and the Eu.

You can’t just stick a midwit in a university for 10 years and expect them to be anything other than a midwit, and you can’t expert an organization that values compliance and internal politics more than performance and effectiveness to produce performant or effective leaders. You can’t bureaucracy your way into a free market either.