Oh, a scientist. What do they know? I thought we don’t listen to these people anymore.
In what reality would we be living if we listened to knowledgeable people?
In what reality would we be living if we listened to knowledgeable people?
Edit, since I can't make a post right now since HN thinks I've posted too much, here's some examples of technoracies:
"The former government of the Soviet Union has been referred to as a technocracy.[20] Soviet leaders like Leonid Brezhnev often had a technical background. In 1986, 89% of Politburo members were engineers.[20] "
"Many previous leaders of the Chinese Communist Party had backgrounds in engineering and practical sciences. According to surveys of municipal governments of cities with a population of 1 million or more in China, it has been found that over 80% of government personnel had a technical education"
"Since the 1990s, Italy has had several such governments (in Italian, governo tecnico) in times of economic or political crisis,[27][28] including the formation in which economist Mario Monti presided over a cabinet of unelected professionals."
"The term 'technocratic' has been applied to governments where a cabinet of elected professional politicians is led by an unelected prime minister, such as in the cases of the 2011-2012 Greek government led by economist Lucas Papademos and the Czech Republic's 2009–2010 caretaker government presided over by the state's chief statistician, Jan Fischer.[3][31] In December 2013, in the framework of the national dialogue facilitated by the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, political parties in Tunisia agreed to install a technocratic government led by Mehdi Jomaa."
"The Syrian Salvation Government, the predecessor to the Syrian transitional government,[33] was characterized by observers as an authoritarian technocracy"
However there ARE questions that can be neutrally evaluated, or at least where neutral evaluation can narrow the field of reasonable decisions. Medical policy is replete with decisions like this, and so we really should be consulting experts and strongly listening to their decisions in this field.
Of course, it is always easy for a backwater to play catchup after someone else has already figured out how to advance. It is difficult to attribute that success to technocracy, and it is likely that any system could have allowed the same forward momentum, but the correlated track record is quite good regardless.
The USA flirted with the idea of technocracy around the time of the Great Depression. That is, perhaps, where the "bad record" idea has come from, but that's a pretty big leap.
Just as the king of england is the head of state yet not the source of power
The king of England doesn’t run Britain in any sense.
American oligarchs exercise more political power than he does.
the point being, official institutions are not always the strongest in the state, a state can be practically ruled by lawyers while having a functioning government
So by “running things” you mean person whose ancestors ran things. Q. E. D.
Your top comment does not describe “organizations ruled by lawyers.”
The british king example is how a country can evolve from one point of power to another over time, while keeping the existing institutions.
When imagining a system of government ruled by lawyers, I see it similar to an organization ruled by lawyers. In such organization/government the leaders are afraid of doing and thus are using lawyers as their excuse not to do anything.
Because of the vacuum of power, essentially the only policies actually being enacted are decided by the lawyers, which is whatever makes their job easier (minimum legal risk, minimum interpretations)
My point is you're not describing an organisation ruled by lawyers. You're describing one ruled by nobody.
It would be like me saying organisations led by engineers don't work because if I imagine an organisation where the engineers aren't actually in charge, but someone asks an engineer whenever they don't want to make a decision, it doesn't work.
Others might imagine a parliament system as a system where the lawyers are in control, I don't think that's the case with parliaments
But sitting back and doing nothing on the basis of their worry wouldn't fly in the real world. If such a hypothetical government existed, the leaders would have to act, else be quickly overthrown. Power is only able to be held if the people want to give it to you.
Can you provide any examples?
They’re not perfect, but frankly they humiliate the US in a lot of areas because the US system is too sclerotic to adapt and improve.