FPJ Analysis: Technocratic, Not Democratic, America

The past ten weeks have transformed the United States of America in ways that many had not imagined, with the sweeping and far-reaching changes in its tariff regimes, announced on Thursday, threatening to upend the global economic order. This, as economists of repute point out, may well be the end of the era of globalisation in the sense that it prevailed in the past few decades, at least since the Bretton Woods system set up in the aftermath of the Second World War collapsed in the early 1970s. The global economic transformation will unfold as time passes, more rapidly now than back then, but there is no doubt that the economic changes will trigger political transformation too, or have already triggered them, at least in the USA. The Mecca of democratic capitalism, or market democracy, is slipping into what is increasingly framed as technocracy at its least harmful and techno-feudalism at its worst.

With an unprecedented level of technocrats, unelected officials with specialised expertise in different fields, in President Donald Trump’s cabinet, the talk around town is that the USA can no longer pride itself on being the oldest democracy on earth; it has embraced technocracy, which allows specialist stakeholders to be in power while reducing the rights and will of the people. This was unveiled at his inauguration in January when the owners and chief executive officers of some of the largest corporations, especially tech firms, were given pride of the place, and the world’s richest man and corporate mogul, Elon Musk, has behaved as the unelected president or President Trump’s speaking shadow since. Debates and assertions have gathered momentum about how technocrats, especially men associated with the online payment platform PayPal, put together the plan to dismantle democracy, replace it with technocracy, and install Trump as their chosen man. None of the men have refuted the charge so far.

The USA has flirted with technocracy before, and it did not end well. Technocracy became a popular alternative to the political system of the day during the Great Depression, but, as events showed, it led to more populism, justified resistance against the powerful and unaccountable technocrats, and conflict about their decisions as well as their right to take decisions. Musk’s influence over the US government and his ill-advised steps to cut back federal spending on essential services have lit a fire in the barnyard already. Even if he steps away now, as he claims to have, the damage has been done to the economy and the people, ironically, and presumably, with the consent of the president. However, this may just be the beginning, and the USA may well be heading towards techno-feudalism, as economists like the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, stated. Instead of transitioning from capitalism to something better, techno-feudalism erases centuries of socio-political evolution by vesting private companies—in this case, tech giants like Meta, Google, Amazon, and X—with unaccountable power that turns them into modern-day feudal lords. Democracy is in peril, in its home.