Reliance on experts to shape public policy is nothing new. In fact, in American politics, the creation of a professional bureaucracy was the solution to political corruption. By the end of the 19th century, the patronage system (in which a party’s supporters received government jobs after their party won to encourage and reward partisan loyalties) had incentivized the major political parties to focus less on policy and more private gain. This was also the end of the Gilded Age, in which monopolies (or trusts like the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil) ran Washington, D.C., and the average citizen was working 60-hour weeks in an often-feeble attempt to make ends meet.
The Farmers’ Alliance of the 1880s gave way to the Populists of the 1890s, who were supplanted by the Progressives at the turn of the century. Among other things, these three movements, the last one most of all, are responsible for the rise of the bureaucratic state staffed by experts instead of political appointments. And under President Teddy Roosevelt, trusts were busted and the influence of the super-rich waned somewhat in Washington, D.C.
As the 20th century unfolded, the federal bureaucracy grew first under President Wilson, a Princeton professor whose work included treatises on the need for more experts in government. As the welfare state boomed under FDR and then LBJ so did the bureaucratic state. And while the entire federal bureaucracy is technically under the president (head of the executive branch) and accountable to Congress, many of these departments and their heads have gained more autonomy under the specific laws and regulations that expanded them.
All of these experts were supposed to produce better public policy, and some I’m sure have done just that. Others have contributed to a rogue intelligence agency and politicized Department of Justice, etc. And in the subtle wake (or calm before the second storm) of COVID-19, it’s easy to blame Dr. Fauci for ineffective lockdown and public health policies while ignoring our structural reliance on expertise that clearly comes at a cost.
Limits of Expertise
It’s vital that we respect the years of training and intellectual rigor required to gain expertise in a particular area of study while understanding the limitations of that expertise. First, there’s a difference between thoroughly understanding a phenomenon and being able to predict outcomes. If this weren’t the case, political scientists would wipe out betting pools after every election. And as a political scientist in academia at the time of the 2016 election, I can assure you that Trump’s victory shocked and rocked my entire department of political experts. And don’t get me started on meteorologists and their forecasts.
Secondly, as I’ve said before, experts are usually trained in a precise field of study, which they know well, but the real world doesn’t fit neatly into academic disciplines. It’s one thing for a medical doctor to advocate for a particular public health policy, but it would take expertise in economics, constitutional law, public policy, sociology, psychology, etc., to assess all the potential impacts of that policy. So, when we rely on one kind of expert in governance we end up trying to complete a 500-piece puzzle with only a handful of pieces. Professor Thomas Sowell and Professor Jordan Peterson explained this point more eloquently in the following videos:
Thirdly, there’s a real danger in promoting expertise over everything else. America is a constitutional democratic republic reliant on the will of the governed and bounded by the rule of law, not the rule of men regardless of their expertise. It seems that all a group of political elite need is to find and march out an expert on a matter and silence expert detractors to subvert our laws and constitutional rule.
Ironically, this puts us back where we were before the Progressive Era with those in power crushing the very citizens they are obligated to serve. But this time it’s in the name of science and social engineering, so it’s fine. As the 20th century dictators understood, breaking citizen eggs to make utopian omelets is worth it… as long as you can conceal the egg shells.
COVID Zero Policy and Shanghai
I am convinced that the COVID Zero policies are the brain child of experts who are set on maximizing public health in this narrow arena at the expense of all else. The irony is that this zero-tolerance mindset may lower COVID cases and deaths while it increases the rates of other, (more deadly) physical, mental, and emotional conditions. It’s like tearing off a wall to patch a small leak in your ceiling.
When we prioritize an extreme policy outcome over all else, we must make sacrifices like forfeiting our rights, opportunity costs of not addressing potentially more pressing problems, and the unintentional consequences of short-sighted, narrow polices. And this is exactly what we’re seeing in Shanghai.
According to social media and reports, Shanghai has been under a draconian lockdown in the pursuit of China’s COVID zero policy. Citizens of one of the largest cities in the world were locked in their homes for at least five days in a city where food is in short supply. Grocery stores are picked over and food delivery services are overwhelmed. Many of the sick citizens of Shanghai cannot find medicine or any kind of treatment.
Shanghai’s health workers are dragging everyone who tests positive for COVID-19, including children, into scant, centralized quarantine facilities even if those who test positive have no symptoms. There are also reports that these health workers are killing the pets of the quarantined. Others have been locked in their homes from the outside. All of this while the positive case rate (of mostly asymptomatic cases) is about 1% of the city’s population. Yep. 1%. But don’t take my word for it because I did the math myself, and I never took calculus. Population: 26 million, Cases: ~26,000.
And unsurprisingly, the Chinese government is cracking down on social media accounts and journalists recording and reporting on the situation. But don’t worry, China will be easing the draconian, abusive lockdowns soon, at least according to some American media sources. In the meantime, they have drones and robots roaming the streets and policing its citizens. Teched out big brother is watching y’all.
If you want to learn more about this, I recommend this video. Please be aware that it may contain disturbing images for some viewers.
Tyranny of Expertise
Before y’all say I’m crazy for comparing Shanghai to the COVID-19 lockdowns in America or our continued mask and vaccine policies throughout the country and for some federal workers, consider this. Before March 2020 did you think that the government could shut down churches, shops, and, in some cases, entire cities and states? Before March 2020 did you think that Americans would be arrested for attending religious services? Before March 2020 did you think that you could face taking a “vaccine” without full FDA approval or lose your job?
My problem is not with experts themselves, but rather they attitude many of them have towards the general population and how political actors adopt and echo that attitude. Some of the most vocal experts and their political pals think that you’re too stupid to take care of yourself so they raise taxes to expand the welfare state.
You’re too incompetent to make your own medical decisions, and your doctor isn’t prestigious enough, so they’re going to make one-size-fits-all medical policies. You’re too ignorant to sort out the news for yourself, so the people we’re supposed to hold accountable are going to cover up potential scandals, lie to us, and tell us to trust them blindly. And they probably think you’re too stupid to vote, but they haven’t found a way around that one… oh wait, they’re ushering tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into the country to take your place.
There’s also a tendency among some experts to see all the problems inherent in their field of study and see how the world ought to be. Some experts have the humility to accept that the costs of interventions required to make the world as they believe it should be are too high. Others believe they know best and are willing to move heaven and earth to bring their utopian vision to fruition.
It’s that second group that is the most dangerous because we often become the unwilling participants in their real-world studies. This happened with the introduction of common core, failed no bail policies in places like New York, and all the problems stemming from wokeism and critical race theory being jammed down our throats. I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in being forcibly shoved into anyone’s proverbial test tube.
Mel Gibbon’s character Benjamin Martin said in The Patriot, “Would you tell me please… why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?” Today we should ask ourselves why we should trade tyrants in a government with electoral accountability for the tyranny of expertise with white coats and god-complexes.