[sengan]

It's harder to be corrupt if you have to argue technically why your decisions will improve the economy.

Engineers and Scientists value the truth, whereas Lawyers value a convincing argument whether it is true or not. Think about their jobs: you can't convince reality you're right, but you can convince a jury.

I think you'd find it much harder to create feedback models of the economy which just happen to predict the best thing to do is to "Give Goldman Sachs a bonus to fix the economy", than it is to come up with some unprovable scare-mongering which terrifies the politicians into doing just that.

So yes, engineers or scientists would probably be more trustworthy running the economy as long as they stay true to the discipline.

[gaius]

"Scientific" government is what produced the USSR and is currently operating in China. There is even a word for it: technocracy.

People who think they know best for everyone else need to be kept far away from real power, whatever their political flavour.

[TriinT]

There's another way of being "scientific" when it comes to policy. Instead of having a bunch of crooks in positions of power deciding for everyone, why not have the government designing markets and institutions that work, leaving the decision-making for the people?

The scientific approach to government should not be the USSR over-centralization. It should be intelligent design. Create the incentives, set the rules, and step back when the games begin.

[locopati]

'Engineers and Scientists value the truth.'

Do you live in NYC or a similarly large city? I think you'd see that engineers (specifically, in the building & construction trades) can be just as corrupt as the next guy (and we're talking people's safety here, not the kind of corruption that doesn't harm others so much, like fake parking permits).