Mathis Bitton writes at National Review Online about one South American nation‘s experience with technocratic government.
On paper, Chile is Latin America’s most developed economy and most stable democracy. In less than 40 years, the country went from being one of the poorest nations in the region to having the highest GDP per capita on the continent. Unlike many of its South American counterparts, the Chilean government has embraced free markets and implemented business-friendly tax and labor-market reforms. While these policies have exacerbated inequalities, the proportion of the population living below the poverty line has decreased from 52 percent in 1987 to less than 5 percent in 2019. In short, until recently at least, Chile was a shiny example of successful modernization, efficient neoliberalism, and competent governance. …
… Yet the government failed to defend its reforms before the Chilean people. Despite Piñera’s empirical success, the country was torn apart by a series of riots and demonstrations demanding radical changes in education policy.
This failure marked the beginning of a pattern. One after the other, Piñera’s reforms proved efficient but disproportionally beneficial to the wealthy. …
… Unfortunately, Piñera and his cabinet were no firebrand statesmen; they were a pack of academics, experts, and technocrats who thought that numbers would eventually speak for themselves.
But they did not. At the end of 2019, to the great astonishment of virtually every foreign commentator, Chile descended into a state of chaos. …
… Why would a people choose to revolt against a government that has made their nation better off than at any time in its history? Perhaps because politics is not what John Stuart Mill called a “marketplace of ideas,” that is, an antechamber of objectivity where perfectly rational human beings engage in Enlightenment-style discourse. …
… Burke understood that politics is a world filled with indignation and uproar, a universe of shouting, growling, and protesting.
