Technocracy

[Ultima22689]

So I was riding with a friend who happens to listen to Rush Limbaugh which he finds to be hilarious and it is pretty darn hilarious. Something caught my attention this time however. He mentioned that liberals and scientists, intellectuals, etc want to turn America into a technocracy. I never really heard the term used in reality before so I decided to read up on what the heck he is talking about. After doing so, I thought the idea of a technocracy could be interesting, my only beef is that it reads to be in opposition to freedom, something I believe in strongly, what do you guys think of a technocracy and what do you know of it? Care to expand on it?

[Whitney]

I had to google technocracy.

I think the idea of having professionals be in charge of specialized decisions is a good one; but I don't like the idea of them being chosen bureaucratically and I only think it would be appropriate for certain offices...for example, no need to make sure the president is of a specific education background but the head of the FDA, EPA, etc should all be required to be properly qualified.  What's to keep from just creating requirements for offices...like the head of the EPA must have a degree in Environmental Science and then anyone with that degree is eligible to run for office.

[The Magic Pudding]

There is China, not the most free of places but I make some allowance for the huge problems they have faced and to some extent overcome.

http://www.observa.it/view_page.aspx?ID=337&LAN=ITA

11/07/2007
The Technocratic Trend and Its Implication in China
di Jungwon Yoon

Time and Space Tunnel Since the early 1980’s, the post-Mao China has been governed by three generations of technocratic leadership. As a result of massive elite transformation under new leadership of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, technocrat emerged at the core leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China. While the CCP, under Mao’s regime, was largely led by soldiers, peasants, and the worker class, in post-Mao China, they were all replaced by highly educated scientists and engineers.
In the early 1980s, the post-Mao reform launched by Deng aimed at reviving the broken-down economy and full of poverty in the country with the ultimate goal of becoming a modern, industrial economy of wealth and advanced technologies. During the reform era, old revolutionary cadres were replaced with people who are politically reliable, young, better educated in science and engineering (S&E). This “technocratic turnover” in Chinese politics, in fact, has marked a turning point to make a stepping stone of national modernization and economic development in China. The successful reforms under new technocratic leaderships since the early 1980s resulted in unprecedented rates of economic growth in China.

So the USA is warned away from nasty godless technocracy while China embraces it, interesting times.

[Inevitable Droid]

I favor the compromise I call, democratic technocracy, in which there would be no specified educational or professional requirements for elected officials, but for appointed officials (including Cabinet Secretaries and Supreme Court Justices) the highest available and relevant educational and professional credentials would be required by law.

[Ultima22689]

I like what's been proposed here so far. I think I would prefer to live in a democratic technocracy than to what we have now.