I don’t see David Brooks’s column on the rise of a new economic establishment as supportive of that development:
The government will be much more active in economic management (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Democrat). Government activism will provide support to corporations, banks and business and will be used to shore up the stable conditions they need to thrive (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Republican). Tax revenues from business activities will pay for progressive but business-friendly causes — investments in green technology, health care reform, infrastructure spending, education reform and scientific research.
If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We’re not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We’re not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We’re entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable — and often oligarchic — framework for capitalist endeavor.
Like other forms of aristocracy, the sort of technocracy Mr. Brooks’s column outlines is just a rationalization by those in power of the power that they have. Washington Democrats are nominally populist and operationally technocratic. Washington Republicans are nominally free marketers and operationally technocratic. Other than the labelling how does a new regime in which technocrats run the economy by the power of their mighty brains (and their Ivy League diplomas) differ from a regime in which technocrats masquerading as populists or free marketers run things?
Is technocracy inevitable? I don’t think so and, indeed, believe that we’d be better off simply recognizing that the world economy is an emergent phenomenon too complicated to be run by anybody however intelligent or well-educated. But as the complexity rises it’s certainly tempting to put the reins into the hands of people who claim to have the ability and training to do things right.
