@Gilan
I think there is some clarification needed.
"By your own explanation, the system seems ripe for abuse, instead of complementing the democratic exercise, it may supplant it. I prefer public process to private interest groups."
Any system is ripe for abuse. Our system makes it so democracy, specifically, the popular vote, doesn't have as much power. I think that's a good thing. People are stupid, and most people don't really care about issues outside of how it personally affects them. It's why we have a Representative Democracy, in that we delegate our individual political power to a Representative that is supposed to represent us ā the idea being that the Representative would represent the interests of a large segment of people. I think that makes more sense to me. Lobbying is a private form of representation which I think is necessary to the idea of free association.
Can you clarify what you mean by techno-authoritarians? That sounds to me like technocracy which far more left-leaning people support.
"You did use aristocracy first, I don't think comparing republics to an aristocracy is useful either, we'll need definitions for a lot of things here."
There has absolutely been Republics with an aristocracy. The Republic of Venice was ruled by an oligarchy of about 20-30 aristocratic families, for example. Aristocrats are different than nobles. Noble refers to a person that has a high rank by birth and is often hereditary, where as an aristocrat emphasizes status or class derived from wealth, lifestyle, or influence.
Public groups in the US, at least, seek to entrench their people into positions of power that is impossible to remove them from. For example, in most states people that work in the public sector may not get paid as well as private sector, but they have unbelievable privileges, and protections. If you become a bureaucrat in the US system, you're set for life, you will never fear being fired even if you suck at your job. It's why I am a big supporter of Unions for the private sector but extremely against Unions for the Public sector because the Public Sector never has to contend with a dynamic market. And these bureaucrats ā which the Democrats constantly seek to expand ā have massive influence over how the entire system operates.
"I personally find the tendency to blame bureaucrats for autocracy to be very wrong-headed when wannabe tinpot dictators want to purge them first as a check on their power."
Bureaucrats in the US will not get purged. It would require the political will that neither Trump or Harris can wield. It would require the political will to not just purge them, but somehow overcome the lawyer army that would line up to defend them, and the shut down of our entire government system in the process. This would, undoubtedly, make any such political will dissipate rapidly. For a purge like this to happen, in our system, would require decades of single party rule. That's just not something our system allows for, no matter how much the MAGA crowd or Trump wants it.
Elon Musk, as a tech-billionaire doesn't have any control over my life. I don't drive a Tesla, and I do not use twitter anymore. But the teacher's union has an affect on my life. The protected bureaucrats working at the local Department of Motor Vehicles absolutely do. So does the Department of Labor, the Department of Social Security services. Ā I don't have to buy a Tesla, I don't have to buy through Amazon, I don't have to use an Apple Phone. I do, however, have to pay a yearly $250 dollar registration fee to the DMV just so I can drive my car, and it was only this year, in the year of our lord 2024, that the California DMV allows you to order a replacement ID online ā before I had to sit 6 hours at my local DMV just to get piece of plastic that has my identifications on it. When I went to school we knew damn well who the bad teachers are (and I bet every single on of us had them), and yet not one of them could be fired. In fact, they had tenure, which means that whenever there was a need to cut down on the amount of teachers the young, the enthusiastic, the ones with the most energy are the first to be cut. The old, the tired, the near-retirement ones that are just countin the last remaining years that they have to deal with teaching a bunch of ungrateful brats are the ones that get to stay. I saw it first hand how this bureaucracy worked all my life, and I ā like most Americans find it mind-numbing. Our public healthcare, our public universities, all those costs that everyone in America complains about can be attributed to administrative (beuracratic) bloat. According to the Harvard Business Review. the cost of excess bureaucracy in the U.S. economy amounts to more than $3 trillion in lost economic output, or about 17% of GDP.
Which is why I am very drawn to the E-Stonia model of public governance, which has digitalized so much of it's public sector that they actually have a relatively small bureaucracy.