Plato was almost right. Philosopher-kings were on the right track, but we need something more. Techno-optimism is close, yet it does too little and aims too low. I prefer techno-maximalism: let the engineers, scientists, mathematicians, physicians, and other constructors of reality run the polis.
Consider the present order of things. We accept statesmen who can neither derive a Fourier series nor debug a loop, yet we trust them with budgets measured in exabytes of dollars. They gaze at problems—pandemics, climate volatility, brittle infrastructure—then commission “task forces” that publish platitudes thicker than Versailles wallpaper. Meanwhile, the practitioners who actually manipulate atoms, bits, and genomes remain politely in the laboratory, as though competence were a vice in political company. This, we are told, is balance. I call it an indulgent restraint, the moral equivalent of chaining Prometheus and asking for better fire insurance.
Techno-optimism—the polite doctrine that “technology will probably help”—has become the opiate of the chattering classes. It celebrates incrementalism: one more app to share scooters, one more dashboard of insights. Its heroes beam from conference stages, promising frictionless commerce while the sea level climbs two millimetres a year. Such optimism is a lacquer: shiny, thin, and best kept away from heat. Maximalism, by contrast, demands heat. It insists on fusion reactors, not slogans about “green pivots”; on carbon-negative concrete, not lofty offsets; on synthetic biology that eradicates malaria, not campaigns that “raise awareness” by printing t-shirts in ever more vibrant dyes.
The objection arrives, as objections do, draped in the toga of caution: “Technocrats may lack the humanities' wisdom.” Indeed. But stewardship of civilisation requires first that civilisation continue to exist, and the humanities’ favourite pastime—debating the precise hue of moral rectitude while the roof smoulders—has proven inadequate. Maximalist governance would not dismiss ethics; it would subject ethics to the rigour of a design review, where vague sentiment is rejected like any ill-formed requirement. A society that can engineer CRISPR ought to engineer a bill of rights robust enough to survive it.
Voltaire mocked the notion that we already live in the best of all possible worlds; he would surely reserve harsher prose for those who insist the next world arrive slowly, so feelings keep pace. Let us be candid: human welfare has always been a hardware problem masquerading as a metaphysical one. When sanitation expanded, cholera retreated; when electricity reached the village, so did literacy. These victories were not voted into existence by eloquence—they were built.
Therefore, replace ceremonial parliaments with sprint reviews. Swap manifestos for specifications, pundits for principal engineers. Give the budget to those who can read a Gantt chart without perspiring. Our age is too perilous for ornamental governance and too promising for tepid optimism. It is time to graduate from philosopher-kings to builder-sovereigns and to demand of leadership the same deliverable we demand of any critical system: it must work.