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Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

> It's almost as though people who are experts in a field should be in charge of making the specific regulations, with Congress tasking them with high-level objectives.

You're literally advocating for a technocracy, which most people don't want. We don't need a overclass of technical elites running our lives, we just need competent law makers. Legislators can and do consult with experts when writing their legislation. We don't need to do away with democracy just because some of them don't do a good job. Even if they are useless, we do at least have the lawmakers that we want to have.

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> You're literally advocating for a technocracy, which most people don't want.

I remember taking sociology in college, and the professor went around the room asking us what we thought the ideal form of government was. I said I thought it should be the best and brightest running the government in their areas of expertise, and not these circuses where corrupt demagogues win popularity contests.

That's when I learned that I'm a technocrat.

Fun fact, the EU is basically a technocracy. The European Commission authors all European law, and the legislature is reduced to being a vetoing and amending body. They came up with this system after a couple hundred years of people experimenting with republican forms of government, and it seems to be doing pretty well.

> the EU is basically a technocracy. The European Commission authors all European law, and the legislature is reduced to being a vetoing and amending body. They came up with this system after a couple hundred years of people experimenting with republican forms of government, and it seems to be doing pretty well

For whom? The EU is almost completely unaccountable and used to launder unpopular legislation that favours monied interests; the European populace only tolerate it because it's been stapled onto what was originally a politically neutral trade bloc, and have voted against giving it expanded powers in every chance they've had (for all the good it's done them).

> You're literally advocating for a technocracy, which most people don't want.

No. They're advocating for what we've had since at least 1984 in the US. (Longer, really, as Chevron just established SCOTUS precedent for what was already the setup for decades.)

> We don't need a overclass of technical elites running our lives, we just need competent law makers.

And unicorns! And cotton candy clouds! And a river of chocolate!

Even the smartest and most well-intentioned lawmakers still have to function at a high level. They are not capable of getting down into the weeds on the breadth of issues applicable to an entire country of 350M people. Some will absolutely have pet issues they do a lot of research on, but understanding even the basics of everything is... tough.

> No. They're advocating for what we've had since at least 1984 in the US.

Are you suggesting this element of our governance has been well received by the population? Have you been satisfied with the government during that period?

Just because a system managed to become the status quo for a period of time doesn’t mean it wasn’t technocratic. Because that is absolutely a technocratic way to legislate.

The system described in the patent comment is also far more technocratic than chevron deference ever was. Allowing regulators some room to interpret legislation is completely different from giving them some high level objectives and carte blanch to implement them however they see fit.

> Even the smartest and most well-intentioned lawmakers still have to function at a high level. They are not capable of getting down into the weeds on the breadth of issues applicable to an entire country of 350M people.

They have never had to be, because that’s not how laws are written. Laws are written by teams of lawyers and subject matter experts, and then voted on by legislators. If you want to remove the legislators from this process, or distance them from it to some degree, then you’re removing/distancing the democracy from it.

> Have you been satisfied with the government during that period?

Quite frequently, especially when regulators are allowed to do their jobs.

Prominent examples:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-02/what-citi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fatalities_per_revenue_pa...

> Laws are written by teams of lawyers and subject matter experts, and then voted on by legislators.

You’ve forgotten “industry lobbyists writing the whole thing and giving to a pet lawmaker”. https://publicintegrity.org/inside-publici/model-legislation...

> You’ve forgotten “industry lobbyists writing the whole thing and giving to a pet lawmaker”.

Lobbyists are made up of teams of lawyers and subject matter experts too. If you don’t like the people your law makers are consulting with, then change your law makers. In a democracy you’re allowed to do that, in the technocratic system described above you wouldn’t be.

> Lobbyists are made up of teams of lawyers and subject matter experts too.

With very different goals.

> In a democracy you’re allowed to do that, in the technocratic system described above you wouldn’t be.

No; in the partially technocratic system I describe - regulatory agency writing regulations based on the goals and authorities the legislature assigns them - the people can vote for lawmakers who a) confirm the President's nominees to run those agencies and b) write new laws adjusting any edge cases where they feel the regulator has conflicted with their intent.

That's the Chevron setup, that has worked quite well in a lot of realms. It's now being disassembled in favor of less democratic setup, where similarly unelected bureaucrats (Federal judges - with lifetime tenure!) and usually zero domain knowledge make the calls.

I am happy with a many of "the government" initiatives in my lifetime (which spans beyond your 84 threshold) that were enacted by one party (the one always cleaning up deficit messes), yes.

> You're literally advocating for a technocracy, which most people don't want.

Technocracy is widely supported in the US.

I'm sorry to inform you that Hacker News and Silicon Valley are not the entirety of the American landscape.

I'm willing to bet the FDA, SEC and other "technocratic" oversight agencies have higher approval ratings than congress. HN is not the entirety of the American Landscape indeed

Edit: I just checked - Gallup has the lowest ranked government agency/department (the IRS as one might guess) at 30% approval rating. As of June 2024, Congress has a 16% approval rating. To be clear - The public has greater confidence in EVERY government agencies asked in the poll than it has in congress.

Low congressional approval is a great reason to do many different things. It is a terrible reason to remove democracy. Which is what you’re arguing for.

Is that your most charitable take on my position? FWIW, I'm describing the status quo - how does that "remove democracy", and from where? That said...

> It is a terrible reason to remove democracy.

I'm speculating onto your meaning a bit here, but I don't want a congress-critter with no college education in science (or their lobbyists) writing guidance on allowable ppm of carcinogenic material I can be exposed to. I'd rather have PhD nerds at the FDA do it: if that's what you'd call "removing democracy" - then we irreconcilably disagree on a fundamental level. Logistically, how many laws would Congress have to pass each year to have a functional society just to keep up with research and industry developments?

Congress is elected by and serve at the pleasure of the American people.

Public servants in Executive agencies are appointed at the pleasure of the President and his Cabinet as applicable, with some appointments requiring Senate confirmation.

It is therefore "removing democracy" to task unelected public servants with writing laws and regulations. The task of legislating is the duty of the legislature, Congress. The Executive Branch's job is to execute the laws as legislated by Congress, hence their name.

>Logistically, how many laws would Congress have to pass each year to have a functional society just to keep up with research and industry developments?

More than now but less than what would be humanly impossible. Make those fucking Congresscritters earn their pay and votes.

As a co-equal branch of government, the legislature has the right to delegate its rule-making authority as it deems fit and provide oversight to whatever individual or body they delegate to - or create said body through passage of a new law.

Indeed, but there are limits to that delegated authority as has been ruled by SCOTUS and particularly when the laws governing that delegation of authority are badly written.

When such laws/doctrine have been widely accepted as settled for many decades, it becomes arguable that it's an instance of judicial activism by SCOTUS, and possibly a power grab to pick and choose on a case-by-case basis which laws (and rule-making bodies) SCOTUS likes for non-legal, partisan reasons. Such an arrangement would make the legislature subservient to the judiciary, rather than co-equal.

I speculate that congress gets negative approval ratings as they are the proxy for the federal government agencies.

If you rep isn't "fixing" your issues with these oversight agencies, you hate the agency AND your rep.

> I speculate that congress gets negative approval ratings as they are the proxy for the federal government agencies

This is not consistent with the data (over time). Congress approval used to be much higher that of agencies, with more people approving than disapproving of congress.

My take: disapproval of congress ties directly to political polarization, and the effect is attenuated for agencies as they are seen by most of the public as apolitical.

I'm sorry to inform you that technocracy is widely supported outside of Hacker News and Silicon Valley.

Specifically, 51.1% of americans surveyed indicate "Having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country" is fairly good or very good.[0] This is up from 34% 20 years prior.

[0] https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSOnline.jsp?WAVE=3&COUNT...

> "Having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country"

That's a poorly phrased question (for this discussion at least). A technocracy is when experts replace elected representatives and become the government. I'm still quite surprised by those answers, and thank you for posting that. But if you wanted to measure attitudes on replacing democracy with technocracy, I think it would be better to have some more directly phrased questions.

>> It's almost as though people who are experts in a field should be in charge of making the specific regulations, with Congress tasking them with high-level objectives.

>You're literally advocating for a technocracy, which most people don't want.

You are the one equating experts making decisions with technocracy. No one here is calling for the replacement of elected representatives, just for those elected representatives to focus on the big picture while domain experts deal with the technical details. If that's technocracy, then it's widely popular, if it's not technocracy then complaints about technocracy are a non-sequitur.

I'd personally call this a meritocracy -- people should earn their positions by being well suited for the role. But technocracy is a type of meritocracy.

What's the merit based selection mechanism in a technocracy? None of histories most prominent technocracies have had this characteristic.

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