Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by linkregister 3336 days ago
The EU is unelected? Member countries send their own representatives to the EU Parliament; they send council members to the European Council.

The ECB is nominated by the EC.

The U.S. Federal Reserve commissioners and chairman are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

1 comments

Many would consider that unelected. I'm sure you draw the line somewhere too: I doubt you consider every government employee elected just because you can draw a chain of responsibility back to some elected official.
Please don't backpedal by going into the definition of the word. The rhetorical value of "unelected" was to paint the EU and Federal Reserve as unrepresentative.

Hell, by your logic, the U.S. Senate before the 20th Century wasn't elected because they were elected by state legislatures instead of popular elections.

You are simply and flatly factually wrong about this, sorry. I encourage you to check out the textbook definition of the Fed as well as technocracy. You can also Google 'differences b/w a technocracy and democracy.' The Fed is widely accepted by every piece of academic literature Ive ever come across to be a technocracy, and that is the word we use to describe it. Also, the EU can and should be thought of at least being largely technocratic as well.
You're the only person in this thread to talk about "democracy vs technocracy," debating a point I never made.
When you were arguing about how the EU and Fed are, in your opinion, elected, I thought you would be able to make the connection. They aren't considered elected officials in the standard sense we think about it--in a democratic sense--and no one thinks that. They are unelected by any plain interpretation of democracy. That's the reason the word technocracy is used to describe them.