Politicians' Lack of Tech Expertise

You want Congresspeople who are almost guaranteed have no expertise on most subjects setting technocratic policies? There is a reason these topics are delegates to experts. (Subject to executive and Congressional supervision.)

You know politicians consult field experts etc and have legal teams go over legislation with many drafts and experts as well as laymen reading and commenting.Most peoples jobs dont know everything that happens under them... you have people that have specialised expertise and the value of good leadership (among other things) is those who can hire and utilise people well, not know all.

Politicians are not at all stupid in general. The problem we have is in their selective listening after we elect them.If a legislator is not technically up to speed, considerable tax payer money goes towards hiring people in government to do the research and the explaining. Some high level advisers may come from organizations with a private agenda and after a few years of working within the goverment these experts pop right back to their industry jobs and we don't hear of them anymore.<p

This feels to me as if the politicians have recognized that they need some technically competent people to even understand how to legislate in these matters.However, if the top-level politicians, who remain technically inept, are the ones giving the orders, confusion will remain.

What are you talking about? Lawmakers have aides and consult with third party think thanks and firms about a variety of topics. Of course they don't know tech or medicine or warfare or environmental science and they do sound silly when they question knowledgable people because of this but a lawmaker's job is not to be an expert on topics but to consult with experts who will explain to them what is happening and then they legislate based on that.

I don't believe it is stupidity at all, they are corrupt full-stopEven if a politician isn't knowledgable they have staff (look up the staff sizes of some powerful US senators) who can get experts on the phone.The problem is that what the populace wants is not a parallel incentive with what the politicians and their paymasters want. Banning e2ee, the disneyfication of the internet, it's all old power games with a digital twist, can't let ordinary people have force ampli

I'd expect politicians who don't understand something to bring experts that does understand that thing, not to ignore everything they don't understand.

We don't need a congress full of subject-matter experts. What we need are people who respect and can work effectively with subject-matter experts.I agree with the spirit of this argument, but there is a clear downside to not giving subject matter experts a vote at all. Ultimately there is then nothing to stop political expediency overriding facts and understanding, and the elected representatives are free to discard the opinions of the SMEs no matter how valid or correct they migh

The problem is not they ask experts. Politicians are so utterly incompetent on the thing they are putting law on, at the level they will believe openoffice is a firewall[1]. That doesn’t mean all of them are that blatantly unaware of the basics for which they are supposed to decide of some rule, but that is definitely a thing.The next thing is, do they know how to rely efficiently on a diverse panel of expert, or do they take only yes-man/lobby-funded experts around them?On a deeper l

True. It certainly doesn't help that a lot of the elected representatives who are making these laws evidently lack even a basic understanding of the technical issues involved, so they are often guided by expert advice from those who entirely coincidentally are the main beneficiaries of the stronger powers being created.