The Democrat's Fatal Conceit

“Technocracy was the new term for describing the reign of professionalism, and its connotations were almost entirely negative. Rule by expert, it began to seem, excluded rule by the people. It was dehumanizing and mechanical. In a technocracy, the important policy decisions were made in faraway offices that were insulated from the larger whirl of society. The people making the decisions identified far more with society's rulers than they did with the ruled, and their decisions often completely ignored public concerns.” – Listen, Liberal

About the time that F. A. Hayek’s 1988 book, “The Fatal Conceit”, was hitting the shelves, noting the hubris of believing that a central authority could plan a complex economy, Democrats were well into creating their own arrogant mistake.  For the Democrats, it is the credentialed professionals who can solve the problems of society.  In believing so, they too put all their chips on the elite class and slowly began to separate themselves from the great unwashed, the laborers and unskilled workers.

In Thomas Frank’s 2016 book, “Listen, Liberal”, Frank outlines the downfall of the Democratic party, once thought to have divine control of their destiny, when they dropped the working class in exchange for the experts.  A treatise on how democrats went all in on the professional, Frank focuses primarily on how the Clinton and Obama presidencies chose Wall Street and bankers, citing bank bailouts, bad trade deals, welfare reforms, and a lack of egalitarian policy, all but ignoring the needs of the working class.

The first recorded use of the phrase “the social question” occurred in Europe following the Industrial Revolution, when concerns over employee exploitation and a need for better conditions and wages permeated discussions over the growing divide between the rich and the poor, and between management and labor. 

Traditional Democrats seemingly heeded the call by anointing themselves as the Party of the People.  As stalwarts of unions representing blue-collar and working-class employees, the issue of inequality and how to reduce it became their constant goal. Beginning with progressive movement, and continuing through the New Deal, the overriding objective was to address the growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots. 

Their lofty plans would not last.  Instead, a new economy led by innovation and technology would transfer its loyalties to a new base, white-collar over blue-collar, as jobs changed to include more gig, contract, and freelance work.  Known as the Coalition of the Ascendant, Democrats would focus their efforts on the young, minorities, and white college-educated voters.  The credentialed became their core constituency, siding with the managerial class over the common laborer. 

Since then, the fastest way to fix inequality has been to pursue education and skills development, with a college degree being the only thing standing between the working and middle classes.  Attaining upward mobility through education and career advancement, the expert class became best positioned to decide policy.  With a monopoly over their fields of expertise, they also began developing professional associations and licensing requirements, forcing more jobs to require college degrees. 

With the shedding of the working class, both parties soon represented different groups of white-collar workers, leading to a coalition between the two, the Uniparty, which often acts as one.  For the laborers, it became one big club, and they weren’t in it.  It was this merging of the two parties that created the populist movement, the anti-establishment of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. 

While both Obama and Trump ran on the forgotten men and women, and were elected with control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House, and the majority of SCOTUS, both would fold to the donor class.  The real problem became big government, where budgets and debt grew exponentially. 

Addressing inequality is a fool's errand.  It is never the role of government to make people equal.  It is the government’s responsibility to treat everyone the same.  Instead, it is the reciprocal relationship between politicians and the wealthy that has caused the most harm.  Now the government acts to help the wealthiest, whether it is ruled by a Republican or a Democrat.