By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
Under the guise of a legal theory about the unified executive and separation of powers, the Supreme Court has ended Congress’ ability to utilize expertise free of political control to regulate the economy. It is fair to say that experts removed from political control can be arrogant and narrow-minded, but the replacement of expertise with political bias guarantees that policy and regulations will be unable to match the rate of technological change let loose in our economy. There needs to be a balance between expert influence and political influence, and while experts in some cases have had too much power, soon they will have far too little. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the President could fire at-will leaders of what had long been considered independent regulatory agencies. According to Ann E. Marimow of the New York Times:
“In a major expansion of presidential authority, the Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for President Trump to fire independent government regulators despite federal laws meant to protect their jobs… The court’s 6-to-3 ruling to broadly allow the firings, with the three liberal justices dissenting, represented a significant shift in power from Congress to the president, and could drastically change the federal government’s structure by giving the president more control over independent agencies. The case tested whether Mr. Trump could oust Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, simply because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” But the decision has implications for more than two dozen agencies — including those charged with protecting consumers, workers, the environment and nuclear safety — that have traditionally been insulated from presidential control.”
The attack on expertise is not limited to the Supreme Court. We see it in the conduct of diplomacy with the President’s real estate pal along with his son-in-law taking charge of diplomacy, and in warfare with an amateur Secretary of Defense (or War) firing and forcing out generals with extensive military knowledge. The war in Iran is a strategic disaster due to this administration’s unwillingness to undertake serious analysis of military and diplomatic options and potential impacts. The diplomacy with Ukraine and Iran continues to be confused with real estate negotiations. Experts in Middle Eastern, Iranian, European, and Russian history and politics were shut out of the diplomatic process. The concept of “soft power” was ignored when Elon Musk’s disastrous Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) destroyed the Agency for International Development (AID) overnight, and the complexity of the global economy is being ignored by a relentless and self-destructive trade war. The State Department under Trump 2.0 has fired more than 1,300 employees and left top embassy positions empty all over the world. There is no ambassador to Russia or Ukraine. Meanwhile, the military is cutting 20% of its four-star generals. EPA has eliminated its scientific advisory boards, and federal health agencies are replacing sound medical science advisors with vaccine skeptics and a wide variety of non-experts. Scientists, policy analysts, lawyers, and other experts are fleeing the federal government as fast as they can.
These are only a small sample of the immediate and obvious impacts of the war on expertise. The modern economy is increasingly dominated by technological innovation. The internet led to the creation of social media, an influence on our children that makes alcohol and nicotine almost seem benign. We are in the process of using increasingly inexpensive computing power to build the incredible analytic capacity of artificial intelligence (AI). Both technologies, AI and social media, cry out for regulation, but to regulate a new technology successfully, you need the expertise to understand it. If all the expertise resides in the private sector, we are doomed to self-regulation, an oxymoron if ever there was one. We have already seen the problems with revolving door regulation: private experts working for government and then returning to the private sector, where their influence on policy never ends.
I’ve been studying regulation and regulatory strategy for decades, and our government’s over-reliance on command-and-control regulation is a real problem. But the problem is not solved by substituting political ideology for expert knowledge. Rules must be based on objective facts accepted as reality. Companies being regulated need stability and certainty to make capital investments and to guide business strategies and planning. If every change of administration leads to radical shifts in regulation, the cost of compliance will grow. Moreover, the odds of success in influencing corporate behavior are reduced.
When regulation is clear and well-conceived, companies respond to the rules and incorporate compliance into business planning. We have seen that with pollution and safety regulations in the auto industry. One impact of auto regulation has been technological innovation. Today’s autos are less mechanical and more electronic and are far cleaner and safer than they were half a century ago. There is a myth that American deindustrialization was due to over-regulation and expensive labor. The main reason for offshoring manufacturing is that the high-value-added part of the economy is in design and technological innovation rather than in manufacturing. But the anti-regulatory ideology is so strong that our federal government believes that the combination of deregulation and tariffs will result in a revival of American manufacturing. While I suspect robotics and artificial intelligence will result in some modest revival of American manufacturing, capital is attracted to the highest rates of return, and that will remain in the service sector.
Businesses are quite good at navigating government overreach. Supply webs have replaced supply chains, and final assembly of products and management of supply systems have become more flexible to reduce the disruptive impact of tariffs, climate impacts, and warfare. Still, capital investment in equipment and facilities can be discouraged by regulatory uncertainty or rules that are poorly designed. Part of effective regulation is to convince the regulated party of the wisdom and benefits of compliance. They must also believe that there is a level playing field and everyone in the same business is subject to the same rules, and that the rules are feasible and not ruinous. That requires consultation and compromise. Many of the early rules governing air, water, and toxic pollution were implemented gradually. The first stage of compliance with the hazardous waste rules of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 was to return a postcard to EPA notifying the agency that you operated a hazardous waste disposal facility. Once the card was received by EPA, they sent back another postcard authorizing the operation of the facility without any inspection. The final rules on hazardous waste facilities were not promulgated until the 1990s.
But those rules helped build an American hazardous waste disposal industry that operated with care and largely prevented releases of toxic materials. The rules required expert analysis of toxicity, its containment, and its transport through soil and groundwater. There is simply no substitute for that expertise, and if scientists are chased out of government by ideological politicos, the expertise required for successful regulation disappears.
In a world dominated by low-cost computing, low-cost and soon-to-be global and seamless communication, and increasingly sophisticated robotics and artificial intelligence, the complexity of the economy and society will continue to grow. Many of the changes brought about by technology will improve our quality of life. But some will not. No technology is cost-free. The issue is always balancing costs and benefits. One must understand technology, culture, economics, politics, and dozens of other areas of expertise to understand, project, and balance costs and benefits. This requires more, not less, expertise. The private marketplace must be regulated to ensure that factors other than private profit are considered when developing and utilizing new technologies.
I am not arguing that expertise alone is required here. We need judgment, a sense of values, and an understanding of ethics as well. Technocratic expertise needs to be factored into decisions, but it should be combined with human judgment and morality. The only reason that the atomic bomb has not been used in the past eight decades is that judgment and morality have somehow prevented its deployment. It is, as Khrushchev used to say, after a nuclear war, “the living will envy the dead.” So far, even the craziest despots have understood mutually assured destruction. We need human values to control and regulate technology. It is better to use expertise to project the negative impact of technologies than to allow humans to be the canaries lowered into the coal mine to test the air for deadly gas.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
