[governance] The danger of blindly trusting the technocrats

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

+1. As one of those people with a practical and a policy background, I can
tell you how infrequent it is to come across anyone (from companies,
governments or civil society) who has commercial or practical expertise in
the areas they are a policy advocate for. It is a great shame and a direct
consequence is bad policy or spreading of misinformation.

And yes, I've experience plenty of the prejudices of the latter part of
your message. I understand people wanting to 'trust, but verify' as it
were. I don't understand the unvarnished bigotry and prejudice (which some
of you may remember directed at me by some a few months ago). Prejudice
applied to groups is a generalisation - not good, but understandable to
some extent. Prejudice applied to individuals is just wrong - and harmful
to all involved.
On 26 May 2013 12:00, "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh at hserus.net> wrote:

> Equally, people with purely a policy or political background are going to
> be just as poor in predicting consequences.  Either due to a lack of
> awareness of operational reality, or a skewed perspective, or both.
>
> There are comparatively very few people with both technical AND policy
> knowledge, and while the cross fertilization between these two streams
> happens, it doesn't happen as often as I would wish .. and at least in some
> sections of civil society's eyes such cross fertilization produces
> "tainted" people.
>
> You know .. suspect corporations of mens rea, suspect people who associate
> with or work for those corporations as being evil corporate stooges who are
> only working for their employer's selfish interests etc etc, one false
> premise built on another till a very shaky pyramid of pure hostility takes
> shape.
>
> --srs (iPad)
>
> On 26-May-2013, at 14:02, Roland Perry <roland at internetpolicyagency.com>
> wrote:
>
> > In message <018b01ce59e0$e04fde00$a0ef9a00$@gmail.com>, at 10:15:31 on
> Sun, 26 May 2013, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> writes
> >>
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/the-danger-of-blin
> >> dly-trusting-the-technocrats/article12106081/#dashboard/follows/
> >>
> >> Worth taking a look at (and thinking through the relevance of) the
> >> underlying paper http://www.nber.org/papers/w18921.pdf?new_window=1whose
> >> central argument is that successful policy (both in terms of social
> equity
> >> but also in terms of economic benefit) is ultimately about finding
> political
> >> solutions rather than relying on technical ones.
> >>
> >> Perhaps of equal relevance in IG as in economic policy.
> >
> > Technocrats are very poor at predicting unintended consequences. That
> may sound like a truism, but it's often possible for a fresh pair of less
> rosy-spectacled eyes to spot a drawback that the original team didn't. And
> the "team" can be quite a big one.
> > --
> > Roland Perry
> >
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