Greece and Italy have recently had their governments replaced by Ph.D-wielding economists. Britain and America, while free of direct technocrat control, nevertheless rely heavily on economist advice.
The author is against technocrats and technocracy. ‘Economic equations and graphs have their place’, he says, ‘but they are not substitutes for democratic debates about how to run society.’
Clearly wrong, and perhaps ideologically motivated, but interesting.
(Technocrats aren’t substitutes for debate so much as complements. There are right and wrong answers to policy questions. Thankfully, most policy debates settle over different ideas of the right answer.(Others, like the Greece debate, are hunts for the least-wrong answer.) How is it both sides generally have a clear case for their argument? A technocrat got there first.)
