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VitalSigns posted:If it makes you feel better, we can say we're kicking Franken out for complicity in US warcrimes instead of for serially molesting women. that's too harsh vital signs. how about they're sentenced to rehabilitation at that chicken processing plant in oklahoma (for life)?
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Nov 23, 2017 11:18
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The Soviet Union and it's satellites were extremely technocratic by the 70's/80's. Guess what happened despite filling their governments with brilliant engineers, economists and the likes? It worked perfectly, and the Soviet Union was able to overcome all it's fundamental structural problems by applying expertise to it's governance.
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Nov 23, 2017 11:18
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Lightning Knight posted:You're lending cover to a guy who was committing sexual assault. Well yeah, the butt-grabbing is probably more damning than either of the original offenses. That just goes to my own problem with taking anything butt-related seriously.
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Nov 23, 2017 11:20
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Republicans posted:Well yeah, the butt-grabbing is probably more damning than either of the original offenses. That just goes to my own problem with taking anything butt-related seriously.  Mind blowing.
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Nov 23, 2017 11:26
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Republicans posted:Well yeah, the butt-grabbing is probably more damning than either of the original offenses. That just goes to my own problem with taking anything butt-related seriously. Buddy, either you're very dedicated to posting kayfabe, or you're a goddamn idiot.
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Nov 23, 2017 11:30
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Lightning Knight posted:
I'm just a dumb guy squinting, scratching his chin and saying "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh" at this. I wouldn't cry over Franken leaving but I'd feel better if he showed his dick to someone first.
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Nov 23, 2017 11:32
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Republicans posted:I'm just a dumb guy squinting, scratching his chin and saying "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh" at this. I wouldn't cry over Franken leaving but I'd feel better if he showed his dick to someone first. Now imagine if you had to tell one of the women who came forward that "no actually I don't think what he did was bad enough to want him to resign, sorry but your experience doesn't make the grade for significant sexual assault." I'm sorry to say that you have not performed a "am I part of the bad guys" check in this situation.
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Nov 23, 2017 11:34
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Nosfereefer posted:The Soviet Union and it's satellites were extremely technocratic by the 70's/80's. uh what? they made idiological appointments, not by merit or even chance
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Nov 23, 2017 12:22
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Republicans posted:I'm just a dumb guy ok cool, case closed, you can stop now.
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Nov 23, 2017 13:12
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Potato Salad posted:We are very, very exposed right now. A halfway decent deception in the part of a hostile foreign party could absolutely topple our economic or strategic capability or investment. I look at Trump's post-China visit glow and wonder just how much of our future was sold out from under our collective feet. This, in a year with Jeff Sessions letting the Chinese off the hook for some of the most overt theft of tech crucial to our current and upcoming generation of hardware imaginable. oh no, not our economic or strategic capability or investment!!!!
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Nov 23, 2017 14:14
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Al Franken hasn't resigned yet? I mean, it took way less time for Labour to act when it turned out they had a creeper; https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/933686149666820096 And wouldn't pressuring him to resign grant credence to concerns about Moore?
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Nov 23, 2017 14:49
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Goa Tse-tung posted:uh what? they made idiological appointments, not by merit or even chance Of course some kind of party affiliation was expected, do you think they let republicans write DNCs policies? They were however hired based on academic merit.
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Nov 23, 2017 14:52
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Nosfereefer posted:do you think they let republicans write DNCs policies? Yes.
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Nov 23, 2017 15:39
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Goa Tse-tung posted:uh what? they made idiological appointments, not by merit or even chance it turns out one group of priests' definition of merit does not necessarily sync up with another's you can rest assured the Soviet Union was run on firm technocratic principles, with the most qualified recieving high positions. that those high qualifications produced people who were more comfortable papering over the fundamental flaws with their system than addressing them is clearly a fault with the Soviet Union, and definitely an unknown issue in the united states incidentally I am a time traveler from the year 2007, how's the economy ten years later
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Nov 23, 2017 16:25
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Yeah, conflating experts in a bureaucracy with political technocracy seems to be a mistake. You can have a well-staff bureaucracy that knows what it is doing and still have populist policy, and more or less vice-versa (present-day America). In DC, I get the sense that if anything the bureaucracy has become relatively depopulated of experts between budget cuts, and better pay in the private sector while if anything we still under liberal technocratic policy (despite Trump's occasional outbursts).
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Nov 23, 2017 16:47
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I'm not sure if it's possible to have a bureaucracy of experts and still push austere policy, given that we're nearing on a decade of evidence that it doesn't work at all.
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Nov 23, 2017 17:24
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gently caress technocratic experts. Give me a strong but loyal idiot any day. Also, just LOL if you think “technocrat” is anything other than code for “corporate shill that actually knows how government functions”.
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Nov 23, 2017 17:46
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Neurolimal posted:Al Franken hasn't resigned yet? Republicans have no shame, so no. He should just resign because it’s the right thing to happen.
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Nov 23, 2017 17:53
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Ytlaya posted:The problem is that there's no way for the public to really gauge this with politicians and public figures. You could maybe get some feeling for how competent/"insightful" someone is if you worked directly with them, but you can't get it from their credentials or background, and you probably also can't really get it from the things they say in speeches, so it's basically an unknowable factor as far as its role in politics is concerned. There's no universal arbiter who decides "this person is insightful," so it's ultimately up to the judgement of individuals Spot review of open issues and quarterly/annual quality control review of a random sample of resolutions is very much a thing. This isn't actually an unmitigated or unmanageable problem irl. It's not inherently unknowable -- this is the core of transparent review and accountability. Edit: heck, I'll add that this isn't even something that's a problem unique to government. We're inherently fallible, but with honest management, good research and quality control, and tansparency and oversight you can do drat well. It's not like mistakes leave people without remedy. We have the courts to review cases when someone feels ailed. There is one huge issue here in that litigation has a monster bar of every -- money -- that provides asymmetric recourse for moneyed interests. Judicial review can also steer guidance and policy. I am certain we can agree about where money and policy mix to ill effect. Competence in government doesn't guarantee justice in governance, but it is one of the many prerequisites. I've talked last night about ethics, real life experience and empathy, judgment... Most things you want in a good employee working for you in business is important in government as well, because in a sense they should be working for you as well. Don't rag on competence by reducing this to a vacuum. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Nov 23, 2017 |
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Nov 23, 2017 18:03
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R. Guyovich posted:oh no, not our economic or strategic capability or investment!!!! I know, right? Who cares about the economy or our future.
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Nov 23, 2017 18:04
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Potato Salad posted:I know, right? Who cares about the economy or our future. We haven't had competent people running our economy for a long time. Oh sure, it's looked good for a while, but it's basically been a complete sham since at least 1980. That being said though, the gutting of agencies like the EPA very much does frighten me.
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Nov 23, 2017 18:20
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inkblot posted:We haven't had competent people running our economy for a long time. Oh sure, it's looked good for a while, but it's basically been a complete sham since at least 1980. Yeah. Get money out of politics, get money out of institutions that need to be better firewalled in order to better serve a just society. I mean, or just tear it all down idc inkblot posted:That being said though, the gutting of agencies like the EPA very much does frighten me. I think we can agree that the EPA is being inappropriately oversteered by politicians representing pure moneyed interest, yes? Like, censoring research findings and penetrating offices that should be independent bodies is happening too much right now? Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Nov 23, 2017 |
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Nov 23, 2017 18:22
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Potato Salad posted:Heeeey someone who I'd bet a nickel doesn't actually get involved with policymaking and probably has some internal preconception of rows and rows of typewriters hammering out useless reports. Tell me, do you think the WH40K Administratum really has any actual foundation in reality? If you do, you can get off here because your experience and opinions on this front aren't grounded in any actual reality. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are extremely competent and talented at what they do.
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Nov 23, 2017 18:57
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Competent, independent talent drives good government
Yeah lol without competent talent all that band jack and poo poo
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Potato Salad posted:I think we can agree that the EPA is being inappropriately oversteered by politicians representing pure moneyed interest, yes? Like, censoring research findings and penetrating offices that should be independent bodies is happening too much right now? Oh absolutely. The problem that I, and I am imagining most people, have with the concept of "technocracy" is more in regards to its more colloquial association with economic leaders who have essentially been selling out the country for decades. The gradual rolling back of labor protections, the deregulation of markets, the push for globalization and with it the free movement of capital, those have pretty much all come back around to bite anyone who isn't independently wealthy in the rear end really hard. In the academic sense I have no problem with technocratic governance - those who are knowledgeable and competent in their fields should be heading those government departments. The problem is when you combine the innate greed and profit seeking behavior of capitalism with those who are experts in that field, they will use their expertise to stack the deck in their favor. In a capitalist economy, economic experts are going to user their competence to exploit those who aren't experts. "Competence" in this case, leads to predatory behavior, and that is what I imagine to be the issue people actual have with technocratic governance. When people say they do not like "technocracy" they are not talking about how much they hate that the folks running the EPA are "science insiders", they hate the fact that those who understand the systems that govern our futures are using that knowledge to exploit us because being socially conscious isn't a prerequisite for getting your PhD in economics.
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Nov 23, 2017 19:00
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steinrokkan posted:Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are extremely competent and talented at what they do. Not really, they both barely have control over their caucuses. Boehner I'd put into the 'competent and talented' category, if we're talking recent Republican leaders. Like, McConnell has been ruling by trying to be the feared dealmaker but he wasn't able to rally people when the Trump admin first started so he's lost almost all of his pull.
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Nov 23, 2017 19:02
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You can tell Boehner was competent, because leading a caucus gave him a drinking problem instead of a god complex
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Nov 23, 2017 19:04
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Technocratic ideology's tendency to put in power people who will use their expertise to enrich and empower themselves at the expense of the public is just one of the many problematic parts of it - the original point about how technocratic methods dont have any way to decide between various "technocratically valid but incompatible solutions" since they tend to deny that political solutions require a value system as an integral part of determining whether a solution is good or worth pursuing (which usually is resolved by sliding an additional ideology in that conveniently benefits them and those like them but which they completely deny is informing their perfectly rational decisions) is another one.
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Nov 23, 2017 19:22
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Neurolimal posted:I'm not sure if it's possible to have a bureaucracy of experts and still push austere policy, given that we're nearing on a decade of evidence that it doesn't work at all. It does work, though. The real question is what and who it works for. Which is the ultimate problem. Technocracy, meritocracy, fundamentally can not answers the central questions of leadership, the question of "what should we be trying to accomplish?" There is no technical solution to that central problem. There is no amount of experience and skill that will yield the one true answer - experience and skill can make someone think they know the answer, but thats a very different thing from knowing it. Only a value system, an ideology, can answer that question, and the core tenant of technocracy is that ideology should not be considered when choosing your leaders. It pretends the single most important question for a leader to ask simply doesnt exist. So you get leaders with a random ideology or, more frequently, leaders who embrace an ideology centered around personal ambition, since they are most likely to develop the neccessary skills with the explicit goal of getting into power. Worse, those in charge are not only ideologically motivated, but success in a technocracy requires them to swear up and down that they have no ideology at all, that they are neutral, "pragmatic" (not in reality, but in rhetoric) decision makers. Technocracy is fundamentally delusional, so anyone who succeeds in one must be a skilled liar first and foremost. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Nov 23, 2017 |
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Nov 23, 2017 19:26
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As someone who's probably the closest thing to an actual technocrat I find the whole concept kind of a straw man set up to take capitalism down a peg. The problem as defined here is that people, generally speaking want policy and positions to be guided and informed by sound information, engineering and scientific study. That is not how really much of anything works at a political level because the two kinds of people that are elected right now are administrators/managers whom maintain and make the system function and ideological leaders whom have no interest in the system at all, only how they can reach their goals of cultural victory. Technocrats would be rule by nerds and Obama and Carter are the closest examples I can think of that. Technocracy is a tool in our box that we employ to develop competent policy, the idea as defined by the first few results on Google "rule by scientists, engineers [etc]" exists in as many places as benevolent monarchies.
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Nov 23, 2017 19:36
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In the American context remember you actually want to look up Meritocracy, since its a synonym (outside of theoretical philosphy) also Obama was very much an ideological person with very firm, very solid ideological beliefs that heavily informed his governance, even though I am assuming you would consider him closer to a manager/administrator
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Nov 23, 2017 19:40
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if benevolent rule by nerds means letting banks steal and break the law with impunity, then no thanks
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Nov 23, 2017 19:48
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Potato Salad posted:Spot review of open issues and quarterly/annual quality control review of a random sample of resolutions is very much a thing. This isn't actually an unmitigated or unmanageable problem irl. It's not inherently unknowable -- this is the core of transparent review and accountability. Yeah, but this stuff can't be communicated to the overwhelming majority of the general public (or at least there's no way to ensure it's communicated accurately). So the fact that a tiny minority of voters can access information allowing them to judge a politician's merit with some accuracy* isn't exactly useful, especially since there's no reason to judge politicians by merit/competency in today's political environment, where ideology is the most important (in the sense that politicians with good ideology are rare enough that there's never any need to make a merit-based comparisons between candidates with more or less equally good ideology). *To be honest, I strongly doubt this is the case even with most people who believe themselves capable of making this judgement. Even the overwhelming majority of otherwise educated, informed citizens aren't really equipped to judge whether research is accurate or conducted properly. edit: I guess in a more broad sense, the point I would like to make with respect to this general discussion is that the primary issues facing the US right now politically are ideological and not related to basic technical competency/talent/insight/whatever. The core goal should be to replace politicians with people who have the same goals and agree about the sort of measures necessary to achieve them, which is a standard that the vast majority of Democrats currently don't meet, so it doesn't make sense to be focusing on technical competency at this point. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Nov 23, 2017 |
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Nov 23, 2017 19:50
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GlyphGryph posted:In the American context remember you actually want to look up Meritocracy, since its a synonym (outside of theoretical philosphy) Yeah I think it's fair to say Obama campaigned as a leader and governed as a manager. Condiv posted:if benevolent rule by nerds means letting banks steal and break the law with impunity, then no thanks  Ytlaya posted:Yeah, but this stuff can't be communicated to the overwhelming majority of the general public (or at least there's no way to ensure it's communicated accurately). So the fact that a tiny minority of voters can access information allowing them to judge a politician's merit with some accuracy* isn't exactly useful, especially since there's no reason to judge politicians by merit/competency in today's political environment, where ideology is the most important (in the sense that politicians with good ideology are rare enough that there's never any need to make a merit-based comparisons between candidates with more or less equally good ideology). I challenge anyone to define how the government does anything, I at one point tried to make a local government thread and quickly was made to realize that it's different every 5 square miles and most people severely misunderstand how their government works and what its able to do and not do by law. I'm not sure if we need to create a whole new field or what but the only people I see trying to guide the behavior of society with any kind of ideological purpose on a macro level is marketing and ad departments trying to encourage capitalist consumption. Sheesh that last bit is a doozy of a statement.
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Nov 23, 2017 19:58
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Condiv posted:not sure what is so hard about that for you guys I have watched video of colleagues testifying at public hearings being cross examined by lawyers for very large companies. This is after they submitted models and papers at the request of the competent authority showing those companies to be negligent and in violation of regulation leading to the loss of life. I know the political leanings of those colleagues. I am acutely aware of the eventual regulatory changes these process lead to, and I apply those regulatory rules in the field. Basically I have seen people I know to be republicans stake thier professional reputations publicly in fights against capital in which live are at stake and already lost! It's not abstract for me. It's abstract for you. Abstractions are easy.
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Nov 23, 2017 20:02
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Man none of the news coming out of the USA is good. Net neutrality will be dismantled by the FCC Trump is rigging the justice system with federal judges that support his views. The tax code is getting rigged so that any government after the republicans won’t be able to fix things that aren’t their fault leading to another republican government. This is like Ronald Reagan on steroids. Trump is made of Teflon. And it seems most of america is too racist and would rather screw over minorities than vote for their own interests outside screwing minorities. Is this the end guys? It’s like all the laws designed to keep the Us govt accountable are being flouted on the regular. I would rather deal with 12 years of George W Bush than another month of a trump presidency. It’s making the entire planet morally and intellectually bankrupt. And pretty soon the environment will be irreparably hosed too. The last time America had a government like this we got Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR. This time I can’t see anything happening except a lifetime of republican dominated senate and congress with a 2 term trump presidency if there isn’t outright dictatorship. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Nov 23, 2017 |
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Nov 23, 2017 20:04
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BrandorKP posted:I have watched video of colleagues testifying at public hearings being cross examined by lawyers for very large companies. This is after they submitted models and papers at the request of the competent authority showing those companies to be negligent and in violation of regulation leading to the loss of life. I know the political leanings of those colleagues. I am acutely aware of the eventual regulatory changes these process lead to, and I apply those regulatory rules in the field. So what exactly is your point? I don't mean this sarcastically, I'm just wondering if you could summarize what it is you want to change or otherwise what your argument is. I don't think anyone is arguing that people in specialized civil servant roles shouldn't have expertise in whatever area their jobs are concerned with. I think the main issue here is applied to politicians and people believing that ideal policy that be determined using strictly empirical means (or the idea that someone like a scientist or engineer would naturally make a good politician). edit: You also might want to consider the other side of part of the point you seem to be trying to make in this post; while your personal experience gives you extra familiarity, it also likely engenders some sort of bias. It's sort of like people who work in finance and think "well, the people I work with are nice and intelligent, so clearly people who get angry at banks are ignorant and wrong."
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Nov 23, 2017 20:10
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The problem is that a meritocracy is not possible when you have massive inequality. Remember Trump and all his kids went to the best schools. On the other hand Obama brought highly qualified people into his administration but they all went to the same schools and colleges. It was a bunch of smart, probably well meaning people that lived a protective bubble that cut them off from the reality of the lives of the majority of Americans.
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Nov 23, 2017 20:20
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Kraftwerk posted:Man none of the news coming out of the USA is good. 1. HOw can this not be returned through pressure on lawmakers and electing a president who supports Its restoration? 2. Yeah, and then lets makepeople not trust it so it can be changed. 3. HOw is it that dems would never be able to unfuck it? If there is one thing that ensures the GOP's vicotry it is not someone like Trump, it is people deciding that nothing can be done afterwords. I mean plenty can be done. Hell maybe we can work toward a system where in fifty years advocating greed is good gets you put in a camp where you don't get to leave till you say you were wrong to say that and thank the system for having sent you there.
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Nov 23, 2017 20:20
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Ytlaya posted:I don't think anyone is arguing that people in specialized civil servant roles shouldn't have expertise in whatever area their jobs are concerned with. I think the main issue here is applied to politicians and people believing that ideal policy that be determined using strictly empirical means (or the idea that someone like a scientist or engineer would naturally make a good politician). I'm trying to see what about "political forces set goals, and analysis/judicial review/other factors advise on how policy has/is/will affect them" is so difficult to digest. Secondly, I'd argue that successful scientists make great political appointees. Their careers sit in frameworks where anyone with a good argument and even a middling criticism is given the capacity to speak up and fight in a brutally, furiously competitive marketplace of ideas. They're going to actually listen when someone says, "You're wrong, here's why" way better than Chester the Oil Executive who just rules thoughtlessly from his gut. On Obama: yeah he ruled as a loving wet noodle manager and it resulted in stagnant incrementalism that's proven vastly inadequate to craft a more just society. There is a balance to be struck between blind GOP-style administrative "la la I can't hear you" activism and using research as a sanity check for your policy. You need transparent analysis to give even a meager thumbs up/down on whether X policy meets Y institutional and political goal. Leaked EPA research that's circumvented the gag order placed by the GOP is one example of something that ought to serve as a sanity check in government. Is X policy actually going to even remotely come close to working? Or is the politician at the helm of the EPA is straight up lying about trying to meet the goals he's given lip service to, like "Keeping Americans healthy?" This isn't unknowable or impossible to determine with reasonable certainly. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Nov 23, 2017 |
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Nov 23, 2017 20:40
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Potato Salad posted:This isn't unknowable or impossible to determine with reasonable certainly. Inb4 someone willfully replies with "  you're saying government should strive to be technocratic meritocracy!" instead of the more holistic, broad pie I'm describing.
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Nov 23, 2017 20:53
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