People support technocracy until the experts that make the decisions do something they don’t like then suddenly they’d be up in arms that they don’t have any say in the matter.
For example, traffic experts would likely aggressively discourage car usage to solve congestion, but I don’t expect the average voter to be happy with that at all.
Like the panel of health experts we had during covid? But with actual power instead of being advisory?
Personally, what I find more surprising is that 16% of the voters want a military dictatorship. And even 1 in 4 of vb voters.
Rules by experts? Ok so do people expect those experts to know everything? Who should be minister of healthcare? A doctor who specializes in liver diseases? Will such a person know everything about the “huisdokters” (idk the translation haha). Or vice versa.
I think people will be surprised that such a governement isn’t bringing the solutions they want. Experts arent always in agreement about what needs to be done.
For example, NVA wins the elections and they can put an expert in charge of the redesign of the structure of the country. Does anyone think that they would put a person in that spot who will want to move things to the federal level? No obviously they would want someone who also shares the vision that more things need to be done on the flemish level. Or such an example with PVDA and economics. I don’t think anyone would be surprised that suddenly there would be an extreme left expert in power.
So yea, i like the thought behind putting experts in power, but i feel like such a thing would just end up as a failure
tekknocrazy
I wouldn’t mind a hybrid system though where you need to have some kind of experience in the field.
Eg you don’t need to be a great athlete to be the minister of sports. Because for that job you don’t need to be good at sports, but you need to be good at politics. But I do think that you should at least have some kind of experience in that field. Could even be as an organisator of sports events but it’s at least something.
1/3 of the Flemish population apparently no longer thinks Belgium is a democracy. 16% would rather have a *military dictatorship* instead of our current system.
Idiocy is truly rampant these days. I give up.
It’s all fun and games until Maggie de Block became health minister…
It’s already a technocracy why do you think it’s so shitty? If you think a technocracy gets any better than this, think again.
Their is no such thing as a purely technocratic government.
Science can help to determine how to get from A to B but not that B is the destination.
Given that we have finite recourses, an ecologists wants to shrink the consumption and the economy to reduce climate change. A poverty experts wants to increase benefits for the poor. A labor market expert might want to increase the difference between working and not working, an education expert might want to increase funding for schooling, a military expert wants a stronger military, a agricultural expert might want to increase efficiency, an environmental expert wants to reduce the cattle raising.
And that’s without acknowledging that experts in the same field often have different views of what should be done and what the effects of those measures would be. You have the famous saying, ask 10 economist how to solve an issue and you get 10 different answers, and 11 if one of them was educated at Harvard.
You need to look no further than the covid crisis. In the beginning it was a one dimensional issue, how to control the disease. Even at that point we had the Chinese zero covid experts, the Swedish no-lockdown experts and our experts that floated somewhere in between those two.
Afterwards the issue became less one dimensional and you got conflicts between education experts that wanted to keep schools open whilst virologists wanted to close them.
I for one welcome to rise the Emperor of Man
Where do we vote for this?
Belgium is by no means perfect not at all, but compared to many other countries. I don’t get this amount of dissatisfaction. Most of the things people complaining about is a Europe or world-wide phenomenon. Thinking about inflation or pandemic consequences. I would like to know how the people complaining would have handled these and if they could handle the daily hate they get.
60% is a lot! That’s nnnnnoice
My sleepy brain reads technocracy and instantly imagines law writing AI chatbot.
So it has begun.
I for one welcome our ai overlords.
I have talked to many economic experts. We need them.
The best way to have economic growth is to cut taxes on the rich, eliminate welfare programs and government spending, de-regulate markets, and increase privatization.
Give me the American and British economic experts. I love them!
It’s actually ever more bleak if you look at the complete survey results (link is in the article). The fact that a not insignificant part of the population thinks its okay to physically assault politicians or damage their property is very disheartening.
All of this shows that our current political system is running on fumes. A technocracy at this point in time may be the better solution. Hand over the country for the next 4 years to experts who use science as the motivation for their policies instead of emotion and populism. It’s not like they could do a worse job than the current administration and it’s much harder to dispute policy if it’s backed by hard, independently peer-reviewed data.
Hell, I’ve come to the point where even ChatGPT would be a better alternative than our current government. Recently I put some queries in there regarding policy suggestions. I’ll be honest: the suggestions that ChatGPT made were better than what I’ve seen from politicians the last 10 years.
Anything is better than being led by VB or N-VA to be honest. However I don’t think this is going to change anything, people also don’t trust scientists or technicians as we have seen during covid. The hate for politcans would just shift to hate of scientists/technicians. Also how bad an expert in his field can be we have all seen that with Maggie Deblock as health minister, never again.
Just look at how happy they were when an expert-virologist told them to wear masks and stay inside
How do you get technocrats to decide on subjective topics?
Voters want politicians to fulfill their promises, but they also want them to compromise. Voters want a technocracy but cry outrage about unelected ministers. Voters want a strong leader who doesn’t care about elections, but also denounce politicians because they don’t listen to the electorate enough.
One might be lead to believe that voters are schizophrenic or don’t know what they want. I think that’s not the case. What I read in this poll is that our people share a strong sentiment of “outcome over procedure”. And that solves many of the perceived contradictions.
Voters want politicians they support to hold course, and the others have to compromise. They want a technocracy or strong leader, provided they fulfill their agenda, and loath it when such a regime would pursue a different agenda. They hate politicians bending the rules, unless they bend the rules for them.
Or in short, they want politicians to cater to them individually instead of collectively. What we see here is the end of the collective politics in favour of full individualism.
Belangvermenging left, right and center. Tell everyone to get by with less while having a higher pension yourself, and make rules to circumvent the already high pension. Be on sick leave for years and request kabinets medewerkers.
Then go full surprised Pikachu that people don’t believe any off your shit. The last few years have been an absolute shitshow, well even more than usual.
I sure wouldnt mind. After being used to this shitshow. I think it would be refreshing
VB voters go like:
* Current form of democracy: Over 70% (not the lowest? What? That kinda surprises me).
* Technocracy ruled by experts: Over 50% says NO! (lowest amount of yes voters).
* Actual dictatorship: Nearly 50% says: YES! (highest)
* Military dictatorship: About 1/4 says: YES! (highest)
I mean, if anybody’s still wondering why nobody’s putting these dumbasses/a-holes in power, this should prove why we keep on reinforcing the age-old cordon rule.
After all their nagging over the health experts during the covid crisis, it doesn’t surprise me that they would hate a ptotential technocracy (not that this would ever work, but hey). But then, nearly 50% in favor of an actual dictatorship? Dafuck? Nearly 25% even wanting a military dictatorship? Like what? WHY?!!!
Just my 2 cents but I think these people are just dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and are just praying for radical change so things get better.
I just think people should be more critical and check who they are voting for…
26 comments
People support technocracy until the experts that make the decisions do something they don’t like then suddenly they’d be up in arms that they don’t have any say in the matter.
For example, traffic experts would likely aggressively discourage car usage to solve congestion, but I don’t expect the average voter to be happy with that at all.
Like the panel of health experts we had during covid? But with actual power instead of being advisory?
Personally, what I find more surprising is that 16% of the voters want a military dictatorship. And even 1 in 4 of vb voters.
Rules by experts? Ok so do people expect those experts to know everything? Who should be minister of healthcare? A doctor who specializes in liver diseases? Will such a person know everything about the “huisdokters” (idk the translation haha). Or vice versa.
I think people will be surprised that such a governement isn’t bringing the solutions they want. Experts arent always in agreement about what needs to be done.
For example, NVA wins the elections and they can put an expert in charge of the redesign of the structure of the country. Does anyone think that they would put a person in that spot who will want to move things to the federal level? No obviously they would want someone who also shares the vision that more things need to be done on the flemish level. Or such an example with PVDA and economics. I don’t think anyone would be surprised that suddenly there would be an extreme left expert in power.
So yea, i like the thought behind putting experts in power, but i feel like such a thing would just end up as a failure
tekknocrazy
I wouldn’t mind a hybrid system though where you need to have some kind of experience in the field.
Eg you don’t need to be a great athlete to be the minister of sports. Because for that job you don’t need to be good at sports, but you need to be good at politics. But I do think that you should at least have some kind of experience in that field. Could even be as an organisator of sports events but it’s at least something.
1/3 of the Flemish population apparently no longer thinks Belgium is a democracy. 16% would rather have a *military dictatorship* instead of our current system.
Idiocy is truly rampant these days. I give up.
It’s all fun and games until Maggie de Block became health minister…
It’s already a technocracy why do you think it’s so shitty? If you think a technocracy gets any better than this, think again.
Their is no such thing as a purely technocratic government.
Science can help to determine how to get from A to B but not that B is the destination.
Given that we have finite recourses, an ecologists wants to shrink the consumption and the economy to reduce climate change. A poverty experts wants to increase benefits for the poor. A labor market expert might want to increase the difference between working and not working, an education expert might want to increase funding for schooling, a military expert wants a stronger military, a agricultural expert might want to increase efficiency, an environmental expert wants to reduce the cattle raising.
And that’s without acknowledging that experts in the same field often have different views of what should be done and what the effects of those measures would be. You have the famous saying, ask 10 economist how to solve an issue and you get 10 different answers, and 11 if one of them was educated at Harvard.
You need to look no further than the covid crisis. In the beginning it was a one dimensional issue, how to control the disease. Even at that point we had the Chinese zero covid experts, the Swedish no-lockdown experts and our experts that floated somewhere in between those two.
Afterwards the issue became less one dimensional and you got conflicts between education experts that wanted to keep schools open whilst virologists wanted to close them.
I for one welcome to rise the Emperor of Man
Where do we vote for this?
Belgium is by no means perfect not at all, but compared to many other countries. I don’t get this amount of dissatisfaction. Most of the things people complaining about is a Europe or world-wide phenomenon. Thinking about inflation or pandemic consequences. I would like to know how the people complaining would have handled these and if they could handle the daily hate they get.
60% is a lot! That’s nnnnnoice
My sleepy brain reads technocracy and instantly imagines law writing AI chatbot.
So it has begun.
I for one welcome our ai overlords.
I have talked to many economic experts. We need them.
The best way to have economic growth is to cut taxes on the rich, eliminate welfare programs and government spending, de-regulate markets, and increase privatization.
Give me the American and British economic experts. I love them!
It’s actually ever more bleak if you look at the complete survey results (link is in the article). The fact that a not insignificant part of the population thinks its okay to physically assault politicians or damage their property is very disheartening.
All of this shows that our current political system is running on fumes. A technocracy at this point in time may be the better solution. Hand over the country for the next 4 years to experts who use science as the motivation for their policies instead of emotion and populism. It’s not like they could do a worse job than the current administration and it’s much harder to dispute policy if it’s backed by hard, independently peer-reviewed data.
Hell, I’ve come to the point where even ChatGPT would be a better alternative than our current government. Recently I put some queries in there regarding policy suggestions. I’ll be honest: the suggestions that ChatGPT made were better than what I’ve seen from politicians the last 10 years.
Anything is better than being led by VB or N-VA to be honest. However I don’t think this is going to change anything, people also don’t trust scientists or technicians as we have seen during covid. The hate for politcans would just shift to hate of scientists/technicians. Also how bad an expert in his field can be we have all seen that with Maggie Deblock as health minister, never again.
Just look at how happy they were when an expert-virologist told them to wear masks and stay inside
How do you get technocrats to decide on subjective topics?
Voters want politicians to fulfill their promises, but they also want them to compromise. Voters want a technocracy but cry outrage about unelected ministers. Voters want a strong leader who doesn’t care about elections, but also denounce politicians because they don’t listen to the electorate enough.
One might be lead to believe that voters are schizophrenic or don’t know what they want. I think that’s not the case. What I read in this poll is that our people share a strong sentiment of “outcome over procedure”. And that solves many of the perceived contradictions.
Voters want politicians they support to hold course, and the others have to compromise. They want a technocracy or strong leader, provided they fulfill their agenda, and loath it when such a regime would pursue a different agenda. They hate politicians bending the rules, unless they bend the rules for them.
Or in short, they want politicians to cater to them individually instead of collectively. What we see here is the end of the collective politics in favour of full individualism.
Belangvermenging left, right and center. Tell everyone to get by with less while having a higher pension yourself, and make rules to circumvent the already high pension. Be on sick leave for years and request kabinets medewerkers.
Then go full surprised Pikachu that people don’t believe any off your shit. The last few years have been an absolute shitshow, well even more than usual.
I sure wouldnt mind. After being used to this shitshow. I think it would be refreshing
VB voters go like:
* Current form of democracy: Over 70% (not the lowest? What? That kinda surprises me).
* Technocracy ruled by experts: Over 50% says NO! (lowest amount of yes voters).
* Actual dictatorship: Nearly 50% says: YES! (highest)
* Military dictatorship: About 1/4 says: YES! (highest)
I mean, if anybody’s still wondering why nobody’s putting these dumbasses/a-holes in power, this should prove why we keep on reinforcing the age-old cordon rule.
After all their nagging over the health experts during the covid crisis, it doesn’t surprise me that they would hate a ptotential technocracy (not that this would ever work, but hey). But then, nearly 50% in favor of an actual dictatorship? Dafuck? Nearly 25% even wanting a military dictatorship? Like what? WHY?!!!
Just my 2 cents but I think these people are just dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and are just praying for radical change so things get better.
I just think people should be more critical and check who they are voting for…