Genuine question. It seems like a topic that isn’t discussed in-depth often anywhere I can find online.
To be clear, I’m talking about technocracy as in policies are driven by those with the relevant skills (instead of popularity, skills in campaigning, etc.).
So no, I don’t necessarily want a mechanical engineer for president. I do want a team of economists to not tank the economy with tariffs, though.
And I do want a social scientist to have a hand in evaluating policy ideas by experts. A psychologist might have novel insights into how to improve educational policy, but the social scientist would help with the execution side so it doesn’t flop or go off the rails.
The more I look at successful organizations like J-PAL, which trains government personnel how to conduct randomized controlled trials on programs (among other things), the more it seems like we should at least have government officials who have some evidence base and sound reasoning for their policies. J-PAL is the reason why several governments scaled back pilots that didn’t work and instead allocated funds to scale programs that did work.
It sounds like you’re not proposing a technocracy, and are instead proposing a direct democracy with a bureaucratic civil service chosen by popular vote.
Which is a fancy way to have an inefficient and easily gamed democracy. As is done in Iran and Russia.
If “people vote” is a core and meaningful part of any system, that system is democratic. And inefficiencies in democracy are always and only ways to prevent the people from getting what they want.
If you don’t see how avoiding bloodshed for power changing is a fundamental advantage of democracies I think you may want to re-read your histories. The ONLY way power ever changed hands from one group to another prior to the American election of 1796 was through violence or the threat of violence.
I’m not proposing anything specific, no. I said it was an example (and I even bolded the text).
I don’t really have a stake in the specific example I gave, so I can’t really comment much else on your critique of it.