Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com