Genuine question. It seems like a topic that isn’t discussed in-depth often anywhere I can find online.
To be clear, I’m talking about technocracy as in policies are driven by those with the relevant skills (instead of popularity, skills in campaigning, etc.).
So no, I don’t necessarily want a mechanical engineer for president. I do want a team of economists to not tank the economy with tariffs, though.
And I do want a social scientist to have a hand in evaluating policy ideas by experts. A psychologist might have novel insights into how to improve educational policy, but the social scientist would help with the execution side so it doesn’t flop or go off the rails.
The more I look at successful organizations like J-PAL, which trains government personnel how to conduct randomized controlled trials on programs (among other things), the more it seems like we should at least have government officials who have some evidence base and sound reasoning for their policies. J-PAL is the reason why several governments scaled back pilots that didn’t work and instead allocated funds to scale programs that did work.
To be clear, J-PAL addresses a variety of issues outside of poverty, and some are even fuzzy, like women’s empowerment.
I agree that inflation and unemployment are mutually exclusive when it comes to managing the central bank. However, is it really that much different from other problems with constraints? It’s not like an engineer just abandons a project and leave it up to ‘judgment’ - they find optimal ranges to adjust the dials to.
If your ultimate goal is to have more prosperity (in terms of employment and prices), the central bank is simply one of many tools that can affect this (and a pretty constrained one at that). You’d be better off looking at additional tools at your disposal, such as evidence-based vocational training programs, and scaling them nationwide.