Why I Don’t Like Technocracy

There’s one thing I wanted to add to my previous post on the Gulf Oil spill but didn’t think it was reasonable to work in. This has been a recurring theme here but I’d like to put a little flesh on its bones. Look closely at the White House cabinet, the president’s closest advisors. With rare exception they are lawyers (Biden, Clinton, Holder, Salazar, Vilsack, Locke) or apparatchiks and hangers-on (Solis, Sebelius, Donovan, LaHood, Duncan, Emanuel, Jackson, Rice).

The exceptions are Tim Geithner, Christine Romer, and Peter Orszag, economists, Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Eric Shinseki, a West Point-educated four-star general, and Robert Gates, a Sovietologist and intelligence guy.

None of them has ever started a business, made a payroll, built a bridge or a building, or, possibly, run a large project with specific deliverables or even hired somebody to do that. Of all of President Obama’s cabinet those I’d trust most to do those things are Steven Chu (physicists frequently actually build things) and Eric Shinseki. They’re the secretaries of the Department of Energy and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, respectively.

Formally, technocracy means the rule by experts or authorities. Practically, it means that authorities in some particular field run every field.

There is apparently an idea abroad in the land that any bright attorney from a good school can do anything. It ain’t necessarily so.

A question that I’ll leave to the legal eagles in the commentariat is are they good lawyers? From my untutored vantage point that doesn’t seem to be the case. The issues of Guantanamo and the trial of Khalil Sheikh Muhammed would appear to me to be purely legal issues and it doesn’t appear to me that the administration has covered itself in glory in those matters.

However, I’m content to leave that assessment to the experts.

7 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    “None of them has ever started a business, made a payroll, built a bridge or a building, or, possibly, run a large project with specific deliverables or even hired somebody to do that.”

    So you want someone from industry to come work in government, make the rules, then go back to work in industry? That seems to have problems also. TBH, a lot of qualifications for those jobs seem kind of nebulous. I will pass on the lawyer bit. As a doctor, I tell lawyer jokes in my sleep. You know, like what’s brown and black and looks good on a lawyer?

    Steve

  • No, Steve. Basically, I think that government service should be the crown of a career rather than a career. I think we need to see more 70 year old former executives, engineers, and scientists who have a solid record of achievement in the private sector and lot fewer forty-something lawyers who’ve never done anything but work for the government as cabinet officers.

  • steve Link

    Not gonna happen, and probably shouldnt. For some of these jobs you need younger, more vigorous people. I would be happy to see something other than lawyers, but once you take people from industry, you set up a different set of problems, like we have seen from the financial sector. Even if they do not go back to work in the industry, you still have the problem of influence and inside information. Think Hank Paulsen. I dont see a risk free viable solution here. I guess we could at least have a 5-10 year restriction on lobbying post-government.

    How do you feel about ex-military going into the defense industry?

    Steve

  • For some of these jobs you need younger, more vigorous people.

    Got it. You’d rather have brain surgery performed on you by a 45 year old lawyer than by a 65 year old brain surgeon. Good to know.

  • So you want someone from industry to come work in government, make the rules, then go back to work in industry?

    LOL, what do you mean want to, it already happens. Sheesh. Where did Robert Rubin come from, where did he go?

    Durrrr…

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