Albert Speer, Werner von Braun, Robert McNamara, John von Neumann and many others like them would likely qualify as “tech people”. I’m terrified of people like them forming a stable and entrenched ruling caste, despite any “value overlap” they might display. Based on prior performance… I’d say it could potentially be just as bad as e.g. a Stalinist dictatorship.
For their part, Stalinists have tended to be fond of technical elites as well. However, I suspect that gristly examples may arise simply from the depth of the sample size; the innumerable cruelties of the premodern world, after all, we’re chiefly overseen by humanistic elites. It may be that today humanistic values are substantially more weak and “feminine” (from the perspective of their predecessors,) but this may also be part of why existing power structures are less fond of employing them.
(All this, of course, assumes this is a useful dichotomy, the primary avenues for elite recruitment under modern liberalism are business and the legal profession, which straddle the line in some ways.)
Doesn’t seem scary to me. I’m more likely to have value overlap with tech people. As such I prefer optimization power be concentrated in their hands.
Albert Speer, Werner von Braun, Robert McNamara, John von Neumann and many others like them would likely qualify as “tech people”. I’m terrified of people like them forming a stable and entrenched ruling caste, despite any “value overlap” they might display. Based on prior performance… I’d say it could potentially be just as bad as e.g. a Stalinist dictatorship.
“Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!”
For their part, Stalinists have tended to be fond of technical elites as well. However, I suspect that gristly examples may arise simply from the depth of the sample size; the innumerable cruelties of the premodern world, after all, we’re chiefly overseen by humanistic elites. It may be that today humanistic values are substantially more weak and “feminine” (from the perspective of their predecessors,) but this may also be part of why existing power structures are less fond of employing them.
(All this, of course, assumes this is a useful dichotomy, the primary avenues for elite recruitment under modern liberalism are business and the legal profession, which straddle the line in some ways.)