The Fed is perhaps the obvious target. The insurrectionists object to the notion of fiat (or-government-made) money. On both left and right there is fundamental opposition to the coupling of private banking with the federal government that managed the entire response to the financial crisis. Europe is also seeing a counter-revolution against two technocratic "coups" of the past two decades: the euro and liberal immigration... In Japan, too, the decline of the once all-powerful Liberal Democratic party signals the end of a system of power exercised over the heads of a passive population by a triangle of business, bureaucratic and political elites... in China, today's rising power, a successful technocracy seems firmly in power. The country's success cements the legitimacy of the communist mandarins. Yet even they cannot take their position for granted...cf. On the way to a new global balance
In the long run, failing elites are discarded. That happened to the aristocracies and monarchies of old. In high-income countries, recent failures of elites have been too obvious to ignore. The advantage of democracy is that it discards failure more quickly and less violently than other systems. True, electorates may well make serious mistakes, by discarding what works for what turns out not to do so. Yet democracy imposes an invaluable discipline on elites: the latter must convince the public that they know what they are doing. Recent performance is making this quite a challenge. The people are complaining loudly. Elites must both listen and respond... the technocracy ultimately depends on the consent of the governed. That is how it should be. Elites may believe the mass of the people mistaken. But they cannot ignore their views.
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posted by parmanparman at 1:43 PM on January 9, 2011 [5 favorites]