Technocracy

22. Ellmers, Narrow Passage (23 November 2023)

by kurto

The 1980’s ‘culture wars’, abating at Cold War’s end, resurfaced in the late 2010s, latterly the more bitter for the revelation of a Hegelian-Nietzschean split between leftists favoring technocracy (progressives) and latter-day Existentialism (postmoderns). Both strands of thought had already been identified as dead ends by Heidegger and Strauss, whose call for a return to classical rationalism is the main topic. Political thought is not academic but practical, and modern society is rational. When Western academics and government officials lose faith in reason, society is in crisis.

The Philosophes had sought to make reason universal; but the unbridled pursuit of philosophy in government damages the city’s ends (its latter-day myths and gods). What has been lost, as per Strauss’ ‘three waves of modernity’, is the conception of nature and man’s place in it. Inability to test authority by use of reason portends loss of agency, freedom. When social scientists speak of angst, unknowingly they refer to essentially political emptiness, reduced either to soulless technocracy or nihilism. (Foucault, who plays an unlikely role herein, observed power never disappears but takes on new forms, ever-changing because it is not bounded by reason.)

History, properly the imaginative reconstruction of places and events, was often seen by 19th-century intellectuals as a mechanistic process. Historicism failed (and continues to fail) because history is neither rational nor ending; but the view assigns man an uncontrollable place in an inexorable sweep, while isolating him within time. Science, which came on scene with Bacon and Descartes, promises mastery of nature but separates facts from values, and so can’t produce a view of the good. Only the pursuit of political thought free of philosophy of history and historicist determination can liberate the 21st century from nihilism and technocracy (the latter seeming the larger task).

Strauss’ unique contribution is an awareness of the moral-political equilibrium (tension) of philosophy. To become political, to establish conditions for virtuous life, human matters must be elevated to reason; otherwise, all is but a contest of will to power.

Plato’s importance to Strauss is evident. The ancient thought the whole consists of heterogeneous parts which cannot be understood as constitutive; but knowledge of the whole is impossible. His famous analogy of the shadowy cave – an argument for transparent use of reason in government – is reified in Foucault’s portrayal of unaccountable, amorphous sociopolitical elites exercising power (the insight giving rise to an otherwise misleading title). Yet it’s not clear why Plato among Strauss’ many influences is here singled out, just as it’s unclear what ‘narrow passage’ refers to. A bibliography is wonted.

14. Garnaut, Dog Days (24 July 2022)

by kurto

Assesses Australian political economy near the end of the resource boom (circa 2013), asserting the need for more non-primary exports, decreased real-exchange rate (the Aussie adjusted for comparative interest rates, inflation, and productivity gains), and reduced living standards (less imports). Dismissive of political leadership, Garnaut, the Hawke-era government economist, barracks for technocracy. Why wouldn’t rivals respond in kind? How do his prescriptions escape the trap of public choice economics and unaccountable progressives?

Japan’s postwar boom had brought the center of the world economy closer to Australia; the impact of China’s post-1978 gains are well documented. White Australia had been inefficient because the country needed people as well as hobbled by encompassing protection, personified by McEwen. The Hawke-Keating era had never known a majority for reform: it was championed by independent experts. The recession of 1990-91 started backlash against reform.

Though Hawke ran a tight budget, the country did not save enough of the fiscal surplus (as a percentage of GDP), instead drawing the lesson that budgetary policy was ineffective.
The Howard administration is upbraided for acting to soften the introduction of GST and higher gas prices. Australia has yet to adopt ready-made foreign productivity practices: in the 1990s, growth trailed the OECD, 1.1 vs 2.5 per annum.

One-third of the economy is exposed to international trade, and the leading constraint on Aussie economy remains balance of payments. Health and education comprise 13 percent of GDP and 20 percent of employment. Accordingly, productivity must be packaged not pursued piecemeal. (Unexplained) monopoly pricing stops the declining cost of imports from reaching consumers, checking the desired depreciation of the Aussie. Immigration has raised skill levels and thus helps attract international capital (although such capital would seem suspect); the assertion that immigration reduces Aussie inequality in comparison with the US is unsupported, and there is no general discussion of social cohesion.

More in the policy realm, states lack effective powers to tax and therefore fiscal freedom while the Commonwealth cannot exercise powers of scale. Garnaut recommends constitutional review by experts. But states with larger equalization receipts have larger public sectors: public choice dynamics look to be at work: why would they not capture the review process?

A chapter on the green economy, now seeming a prelim to more recent work, fails the ex ante test: among many other examples, studies touting the effects the Olympic and the World Cup have been wildly optimistic and rarely address inevitable unintended consequences. Why should ‘climate change’ different? Aren’t advocates another special interest? There’s also a discussion of contemporary alternatives for taxing primary resources, summarized as ‘fair distribution’ of the burden of adjustment.

Most aggressively, Garnaut says no ‘thinker or leader’ has lead decisive historical progress (‘inflections’), crowing a number of questionable assertions about the capacity of political leadership, in support of arguments for technocratic government.
Politics in a democracy is inevitably a contest between groups seeking efficient policy for economic development and equity, and other groups seeking interventions to confer special benefits upon themselves or to kill or constrain interventions that would impose unwanted costs.
Abbot is chided for his determination to keep political promises in changed economic circumstances – why will public experts prove more adaptive? Confusingly, Garnaut suggests the relevant of international benchmarks (p.51) but also the failure of Aussie social sciences to stand independent (74). Private interests skew research.

How is technocracy insulated from moralizing practice (e.g., woke America) – Garnaut’s pandering through the back door?