Case Against Technocracy

 

Here by technocracy, I mean not technological advancement, transhumanism or civilization. I mean an illiberal illiberal rule of the scientists and "educated" people as defined here.

At first this looks innocent. Scientists are people with knowledge about rules by which out universe operates, why should not such people have a greater say over how society is governed.

However, this is not as innocent as its seems. If you think critically, you will notice issues with this system. 

Many Sciences Are Far from Benevolent based on Practices

Being a scientist is by no mean assures benevolence or good will towards those they rule. Biological Scientists for example make rather cruel experiments on lab rats, other animals or even humans as part of their research. If you give them the privilege to rule over society, they will extrapolate their attitudes towards their test subjects to the entire society. 

Medical science is no better than biological in that regard. Even if they take Hippocratic oath, that is just words. Reality of their work treats living bodies as subjects to fiddle with. It could produce arrogance and even God complex.

Psychology and psychiatry are even more dangerous. When one knows how psyche works, it's all too tempting to reshape humanity into something different. One starts by eliminating bad traits and ends up trying to create a utopia of saints.

Some disciplines people call science are rather dodgy. For example, climate science a lot closer to faith than to real science. It produces zealots, no less fanatical than crusaders or inquisition that burned heretics on the stake.

Of course, experiments of lab rats are useful for advancement of science and can produce remedies that are useful to people and make society a better place.

However, letting people who do these experiments rule society is unwise and dangerous. They are better off staying in their labs.

Power Corrupts

First of all, power corrupts and also attracts wicked people. Technocracy is fundamentally an oligarchy or a caste system. It assumes there is an educated elite who deserves to rule and everyone else who should follow the instructions of the elites they have no say over. 

That in itself produces disconnections between those who rule and those who are ruled. Technocrats in power would end up thinking in double standards, one much higher and privileges for themselves and the other one for the rest of the society. Eventually they will look at people they rule as nothing more than cattle to work for the masters or lab rats to experiment on. It would become a de-facto caste system.

Even if they are very moral and see themselves as benevolent, they will eventually start seeing themselves as wise messiah, who leads herd out of darkness. Blinded by such self-image, they can make even greater mistakes and act with greater cruelty, mislead by their limited perception of reality. 

Power can not only corrupt those who wields it, but it can also attract wicked people. A lot more dodge and abusive people would try to become scientists if they knew that it comes with the power over society. Some would inevitably succeed, leading towards ever decreasing quality of the scientific elite in power. Eventually it will create a caste of corrupt unchecked and unaccountable oligarchs, protected from scrutiny like priests of the Church.

That will not only compromise quality of governance but also quality of science. People who joined to rule rather than research will neglect the latter, causing technological progress to stall. They can also misuse their power to ruin prospective scientifically talented researchers from advancing in the system to protect their own grip on power.

Real Life Examples

Also, while technocracy seems like a new thing, it was actually tried several times in history. All these attempts paradoxically produced very technologically backward and oppressive totalitarian societies.

Most recent attempt was USSR and other Marxist-Leninist states. Yes, they were technocracies, not Franko or Pinochet like dictatorships. The cruelties and evils they unleashed on their people are well known. That also explains why people in academia kept justifying these regimes even in modern times.

Officials of USSR were so blinded of their self-perceived wisdom, they ignored plight of their people, believing they are doing something benevolent. They kept dissidents in psychiatric confinement, because they actually believed that psychiatry could actually turn them into a supporter of socialism. 

This arrogance blinded them and led towards heinous crimes against humanity. In that they were even worse that self-aware Nazis. At least Nazi were self-aware enough to know what they were doing was evil. Communist, blinded by their own zeal and uncritical believe in the doctrine, lacked such self-awareness. They were just like Garnier de Naplouse from Assassin Creed. 

One can commit crimes against humanity much more readily, if one believes it for some sort of good.

However, the biggest and longest lasting experiment in technocracy were European Middle Ages. One might argue that Middle Age Kingdoms were feudal rather than technocratic. That is of course true, but that overlooks one layer of power above that of Kings and their Kingdoms, the Pope and Catholic Church.

There were no Protestantism in Middle Ages, the only Christians were Catholics in the West and Orthodox in the East.

In Middle Ages Catholic Church and the Pope held a lot of power. They could authorize war, this essentially installing their favorite ruler as King of the Kingdom of their Choice. In that manner they installed Willaim the Conqueror right to rule England and gave Bohemia to Habsburgs. If they did not like king or any other ruler, they could excommunicate him. Excommunication meant not only ban on attending mass, but also gave all other Kings or even King's own subordinates blessing to take power from him by force. Many of the excommunicated swiftly lost not only their power, but also live. Pope even controlled who Kings could marry or divorce. 

For all effective purposes Popes were as much Kings superiors as Kings themselves were superiors to Dukes. Sure, some kings were managed to defy popes, but many more dukes similarly managed to defy their kings. For all effective purposes, power of Pope over Kings was much greater than Kings own power over their subjects.

Catholic Church of the Middle Ages were a totalitarian organization. It did not allow any freedom of speech. People who criticized or questioned doctrine were labelled heretics and sentenced to death by burning on the stake. Sometimes near entire ethnicities were subjected to that treatment, like for example Czechs of Bohemia during Jan Hus times.

Catholic Church was also infamously corrupt, they syphoned money from the rest of the society leaving them in poverty and misery. Simultaneously they themselves lived in luxury. During the Middle Ages Churches and their managers were the only well-endowed and decorated places in society.

Priests secretly defied the very principles and values they preached. Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander IV) regularly organized orgies with multiple prostitutes, despite clericals vows of chastity. Church was epitome of hypocrisy and doble standards.

One final piece of the puzzle is how all that has anything to do with science and technocracy. Modern people tend to not associate Church and Science. Protestant denominations keep distance from science and often seen directly opposing science.

That is not the case with Catholic Church. Back in Middle Ages monks and priests were most educated and often the only literate members of society. Many universities were organized by the Church. Many early universities still have religious references in their logos. Some of Academic traditions still link universities with monasteries, for example hoods of the academic gown. Vatican still has ten academies in its small territory.

However, how well Church managed to advance science or technology. Not so well. For example, the burned Copernicus as heretic. Copernicus discovered that it is Earth that revolves around Sun and the other way around. Church's technocracy failed to recognize veracity of his research. 

Overall Middle Ages are seen as times of backwardness and darkness, despite the fact that semi-scientific entity held immense power during these times. That further proves that technocracy does not work.

Progress only happened when Church power diminished after reformation.

Fictional Examples

There is also a fictional example of technocracy in Shinsekai Yori novel and anime. Society depicted there is heavily censored and controlled. People live under constant surveillance and in constat fear of being removed by Ethics Commitee. Public narrative is deliberately falsified and most of the information is classified and inaccessible by ordinary people.

Quality of life is poor. Despite having control over the powers beyond human imagination, they lead more primitive life than modern humans.

Technocracy produced an INGSOC like society.

Conclusion

Both real and fictional examples of technocracy produce backward and dystopian societies that are horrible places to live in.

Because of that we need to protect our liberty and freedom. Do not let enemies of freedom erode liberalism and democracy.

Enemies of freedom disguise themselves under various guises, so one must stay vigilant against any restrictions of freedom, no matter under what "benevolent" pretext they are brought forward.

On the other hand, we can have Software Engineer-o-cracy. I am a Software Engineer myself; you can trust me. We created all these awesome technologies such as computers and internet. We are the only good science.