Most educated people could make informed decisions about most political questions if they had the benefit of world-class advisors. That’s my claim.
But how about international trade agreements, tax policy, and healthcare? Those are complicated, right? Yes. Indeed, no president understands those topics in sufficient detail to be trusted with a solo decision. So in those cases, you need advisors. That brings us to the question of how you can find the right advisors.
Easy.
If it’s a military question, you ask the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to get you the right advisors for the topic.
If you have a law-and-order question, ask someone like Rudy Giuliani to come up with some suggested advisors. Giuliani could give you ten names from both parties.
If you need experts in economics, ask your Chief of Staff to round up a few top economists (Nobel winners, for example) from both parties and see if they all say the same thing. They won’t. So in that field, there is no such thing as useful expert advice.
And so on. The point is that it is easy for a President of the United States to assign people to find the best advisors. The President isn’t making phone calls and interviewing experts all day. The President sees the experts who have already been vetted by several other experts.
Technocracy as democracy.
I think his imagined government isn't how congress is run. Congress gets donor recommendations then puts the ideas in front of focus groups to learn how voters like the ideas presented to them.
ReplyDeleteThe focus groups are for testing the framing of ideas and how to pitch them to different audiences. It's all in the framing.
ReplyDeleteThe experts are sought out for the purpose of validating the desired policy and nothing else.
ReplyDeleteThey come in look at your watch, tell you what time it is and then leave with your watch.
The X-Perts are the ones who have rationalised the human race be at each others throats, all over the planet! Because of a 'Cause'. Why isn't the human species and our planet the Cause?
ReplyDeleteI like how Adams backs Clinton but with caveat. Then gets involved and cheer-leads the minutia of the Trump campaign and says he thinks Trump will win. And you might like to read my book about this strategy. Clever and fun in a nice way. I think Adams method actually enables people to be more objective because they aren't tied to one side or the other even if he likes one side better.
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