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I don't think they ever should or did. Since you mention Moldbug, it's not like the King was meant to personally be an expert in infrastructure or coinage or agriculture. A few were, no doubt, but I think the job of politicians is largely to select the right folks to advise him, to choose wisely amongst their counsels and to mediate accountability to the public will.
And yet.
The idea wasn’t that the King would literally know how to do everything. The idea was that the king would have full control over the state and thus could set a vision or set of visions for what success looks like. And while the King might not know all the details, they’d have their entire youth up until taking the throne to learn how to actually run a state. But having full control, knowing the basics of how things work, and having a vision of what he wants the state to look like by the end of his reign gives him a leg up to actually getting those things done. It’s a lot easier to get the administrative system to approve more nuclear plants if the king knows that nuclear is fairly safe, provides a lot of energy, etc. and with a vision of better energy independence and efficiency and a plan to get there, chances are you’ll get there.
Modern democracy encourages people to learn how to run for office with very little knowledge of how to run things once they actually get there. I think democracy does work most of the time, I just think good statecraft is much more important to a functioning state than the details of how the decisions are made. We lack this in both parties. It’s a campaign of clowns with no serious ideas about how the United States should move into the twenty first century. Our foreign policy is based mostly on vibes. Our plan for education is basically to bandage over the failures of universities and do nothing to improve K-12. Our infrastructure plan appears to be “fix potholes”. Health care is still a mess. And general health is terrible as Americans are pretty much obese at this point.
Ah ok, phrased this way I agree with the sentiment. I must have misread your previous post.
I think I was a bit unclear. But the criticism of the west that always stuck with me was Xi Diengpeng saying that we are an unserious people. To be honest, he’s absolutely right about our leadership. And I think Moldbug is right in his diagnosis of the problem even if I think absolute monarchy is probably not a solution. If you read about how statesmen of the past thought about governance, it’s not anything like what we talk about in governance. You can read the Republic and the Laws and Cicero is talking about laws being aimed at the common good. Confucius talks about rulers and ministers having a duty to study and understand the issues. It was seen as an art and a science of making the state prosperous and powerful. I just don’t see those kinds of serious pragmatic leaders coming forward.
Some of this is just incentives. The person who can win the election is the one who can pander best. The ones who can promise what sounds good on TV as a sound bite of less than 10 seconds. If you are drawn to solving problems and fixing things, then I can’t imagine the need to go on TV and give interviews where you do your best to give non answers for an hour. You’d probably rather build a business or financial empire or rocket ships or something.
I think what you're describing resides within the civil service. Even Confucius understood that the Emperor is not likely to be the sharpest crayon on every topic and has to rely on ministers and advisors. The art of statecraft that he has to learn is very much more about how to lead that service, keep them in check and point them in the right direction. The art and science of how to actually do things is somewhat less useful at this.
Maybe what I mean is that governance is a meta-skill. And I think modern leaders are failing at it because they are optimized too much on electioneering (as you say), but I think I differ a bit in that I want them to be serious people about employing and empowering the right folks while curbing abuses of a civil service that has been left to fend for itself because the folks that are meant to be overseeing it are AWOL.
Boy do I have a good story for you that I need to create as a top level post.
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