Junk Drawer
For all those little papers scattered across your desk
Junk DrawerFor all those little papers scattered across your desk
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled “American Society Was Built for Populism, Not Elitism” (paywalled), Karl Zinsmeister argues that power has concentrated largely in the hands of experts and authorities “indoctrinated in universities” (in other words, too liberal for the mainstream).
While he correctly assess a backlash to authoritarian and central control, he misses both symptom and cause. The backlash is not against a supposedly left-leaning power network, but rather against an oligarchic class whose waves of corrupt money have undue influence in American life. FTC Commissioner Alvaro M. Bedoya understands what people need:
What they [working class people] do talk about is how powerful companies are skirting or abusing the law to force farmers, workers, and small businessmen to do what they want, when they want, or else. How the government isn’t doing anything about it. And how they’re going broke because of it.
If there is also a backlash against the scientific institutions of universities, it is due to a protracted campaign against epistemology by big business. Oligarchs have an easier time staying rich in a world muddied by misinformation. Meanwhile, we explicitly want to delegate fact-finding to the experts: that creates evidence-based policy.
What is Zinsmeister’s solution to his spectre of centralized liberal control? Hand over federal programs to private control: his writing on American philanthropy indicates to me that he believes a wealthy élite will rule instead. Same centralized control, different powerful controllers.
The answer is neither populism nor technocracy nor oligarchy. The answer is regulation of power and markets and strong institutional science (necessarily separated from government).