[graemep]

In the UK there is a big element of sheer incompetence. Politicians who have not experience of life outside politics are really will-equipped to understand the consequences of what they do, and defer overly to expert opinion. Of course the police or intelligence services say they need more powers, it takes judgement to balance this against other considerations.

[pas]

incompetence is everpresent in large hierarchical power structures.

just as the UK the US is also full of career politicians sitting in very powerful (sub)committees

[vanviegen]

> and defer overly to expert opinion

That... doesn't sound so bad?

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

> and defer overly to expert opinion

The term 'expert' here actually means well-funded lobbyists who pay to have access to the politicians. They are able to present decision-makers with convincing arguments to pass laws that are favorable to the ones funding the lobbyists. They are smart and they are experts, but they are also laser focused on using that expertise to get what the funders want. This is almost always an outcome that is bad for regular people.

[graemep]

it is bad because experts are narrow. Consider my example, The police will (correctly) tell you that giving them more powers will reduce crime. The problem is that reducing crime is not the only considering in what powers the police should have.

[ozlikethewizard]

its also not true, if we listened to expert opinion more often we wouldnt have had numerous extreme economic and policy failures in my rather short life. Austerity, Brexit, Covid, Public Order Act 2023, every moment of those last Tory years.

[graemep]

The politicians did defer to expert and business opinion over Brexit. The referendum was only called because they thought they would win it. I personally think it was a good thing, but the politicians definitely did not - the point was a referendum win would fatally weaken the leave movement. An interesting irony is that polls before the referendum in the 70s suggested people did not want to remain, the ones before 2016 suggested they did.

Lots of experts favour austerity. The trick with economics (and many other things) is to find the experts who agree with out.

The government did listen to experts over covid. Whose idea was lockdown? Who advised them that a rapid vaccine rollout was required. The government did get confused by experts having different opinions (as one would expect with a novel disease) but once convinced which experts they listened to they did follow them. The main fault was not balancing advice from experts in different areas (e.g. balancing physical health, mental health and economic impacts of lockdown correctly) which is exactly what I was complaining politicians fail to do

[osullivj]

I agree with you on Brexit, austerity. But you can always find an expert briefing in yr direction cf Walters, Lawsom, Thatcher