Expert Failure

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Yes, that's a November 7, 1940 picture of "Galloping Gertie" on the cover, the collapsing Tacoma Narrows Bridge, built by the "experts" of the day; fortunately the only fatality was Tubby, a cocker spaniel who was left in the last car to drive on the bridge, as the owner crawled to safety.

So I was expecting (hoping?) a rollicking account of egg-on-their-faces "experts" whose grand schemes are brought low by reality. Not what I got, though. This is a relatively dry thesis; the author, Roger Koppl, is a professor of finance in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, and his book is written in standard academese. It's clearly one salvo in an ongoing slow-motion debate on the role of experts in (mostly American) government and society. (Amusingly, his school's web page lists him as one of its "Faculty Experts".)

Koppl goes back to the ancient Greeks to find the roots of the notion that experts can and should be in charge of public policy. You remember Plato and his philospher-king idea. (Koppl floats the theory that Socrates might have bribed the Oracle of Delphi into proclaiming him the wisest man in Athens. Darn, another hero tarnished.)

What's wrong with that? Shouldn't smart people be telling the rest of us dullards what to do? Koppl draws on Hayek's theory of knowledge to argue that's the wrong path; it's literally impossible for even very smart experts to gather enough data in their brains to match the wisdom engrained and distributed throughout society. Koppl also references the public choice theory of Buchanan/Tullock, arguing that it's fallacious to imagine a coterie of disinterested experts; they're as human as the rest of us, subject to bias and self-interest. And they are largely shielded from the consequences of their decisions.

In sum, giving experts "monopoly power" to make decisions is a mistake, for the same reasons that monopoly businesses are problematic. Koppl argues for open competition between experts, allowing free entry into that noble priesthood. To simplify: we need expertise very badly, but we mustn't toss the car keys to the "experts" and let them drive.

Koppl's writing style verges on the muddy; although he's a Hayek fan, his prose often makes Hayek look like Lee Child in comparison. Some of that is due to the academic need to Cite Sources, which Koppl does in spades:

Information choice theory includes identity as a motive of experts. Aberlof and Kranton (2000, 2002) introduce identity to the utility function. Aberlof and Kranton (2005, 2008) put identity into the utility function of the agent in an otherwise standard principal-agent model. Cowan (2012) and Koppl and Cowan (2010) spply the principal-agent model of Aberlof and Kranton (2005, 2008) to forensic science.

I'm sure there are readers deeply immersed in the relevant field who might find that to contain useful information.

Koppl winds up with a chapter on the "deep state". He equates this, roughly, with what Ike called the "military-industrial complex" in his 1961 farewell address. That's reflective of the term's origin, referring to the unwarranted influence of defense contractors, the military bureaucracy, and their civilian enablers. That's important, sure. But it's not hard to see the term could well be applied more broadly to every coalition of self-interested bureaucrats, legislators, and their beneficiaries inside and outside the formal government. You don't have to be a Breitbart News conspiracy-theory believer to see that as a problem.


Last Modified 2024-01-17 3:59 PM EDT