Techno-What?

Rule by experts versus rule by common sense. Can they overlap?

I was at a housing happy hour in D.C. the other week. It was very fun. Somehow I always forget what it’s like to talk about this stuff with real people, not mediated through the internet. A lot of stuff on the internet sort of melts away when you turn it off. This doesn’t. It’s a real issue in people’s real lives. (The food was great too—it was at an Italian-ish bar and restaurant, and we had a little charcuterie and Italian appetizer buffet in a small reserved area.)

At one point I was chatting with one of the organizers, and she asked what my impression of the crowd was. “It’s very technocratic, right?” she offered. “Do you mean that as a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked. “Oh, good. We love technocrats!” she replied. I told her that in my world, “technocrat” is basically a term of derision, implying a supercilious expert: an elitist. She was sort of surprised, and had no idea that was a connotation. “Maybe I won’t use that word so much!” she said.

I don’t really know what “technocrat” means, precisely. I can’t say I’ve ever heard it except as a term of derision, typically from conservatives, often in the context of the whole pandemic fallout but not exclusively. I had to look it up, actually, for this piece: the dictionary defines “technocracy” as “the government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts,” and “technocrat” as “a member of a technically skilled elite.”

So that does imply rule by experts or elites, with the implication that they know better than the common people, or maybe even that they know what’s best for the people better than the people themselves. I don’t really see how that’s compatible with either democracy or free enterprise.