Comment by itscomplexetc
1 day ago
Rationality has to be guided by common sense. I’m sure Nazi Germany had many extraordinarily capable technocratic leaders but we have those in ample supply and with the computers now reasoning with us I don’t think we need more of those. Rationality is a solved problem as far as I’m concerned. We have other issues. We lack a coherent moral vision, societal cohesion, stability, sanity. Once you lose those it doesn’t really matter what system you implement, it’s just delaying the inevitable.
Seeing the billions of people who believe in the imaginary, and a few millions of these fight and kill others over these imaginary things, I would say, rationality is not a solved problem.
How were the Nazis technocrats? The core of the Nazi party were weirdo political extremists and violently nationalistic army veterans. The only example I can think of which matches your idea of an 'extraordinarily capable technocratic leader' is Speer, and like his military counterpart Rommel, his reputation has been somewhat laundered and propagandised both during and after the war.
Speer was an academic failure. Also as architect, except the Nuremberg lightshow.
But he was extremely successful as manager then. Just like the ex-NAZI NASA leader then a bit later.
That was the golden time of German management.
> I’m sure Nazi Germany had many extraordinarily capable technocratic leaders [...]
Actually, not. They had a few left-over from when Germany had a functioning state, but the Nazis were overall fairly incompetent at actually running the country.
They were very competent at genocide and propaganda.
The latter, maybe? The former, I'm not so sure. However we don't have many examples of competent organisations trying to enact genocide to compare against. (Fortunately.)
Fascism favors loyalty over competence.
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