[governance] The danger of blindly trusting the technocrats

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Nick, there is absolutely no way to "understand" bigotry and prejudice.  It's characteristics and symptoms are known, one of which is to attempt to segregate and exclude, as a class, the targets of their prejudice,from being part of be same community.  

Now, coming back to the repeated attempts to deny the legitimacy of and/or marginalize industry and the technical community, your email helps me see them in a wholly new light rather than mere petty politicking and ideological cant, par for the course and so on.  It makes me absolutely not regret registering my complete rejection of such behavior.

thanks
--srs (iPad)

On 27-May-2013, at 11:15, Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton at consensus.pro> wrote:

> +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=1 whose
>> >> 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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