Contemporary culture grants increasing prestige to the figure of the expert who avoids explicit commitments and presents himself as moderate, technical, and “non-ideological.” This posture is celebrated as a sign of intellectual maturity. In an environment saturated with open conflict, the refusal to choose appears prudent. Moderation becomes a public virtue.
The problem arises when moderation ceases to be circumstantial and begins to function as a method. The expert who shelters himself in the language of technique, data, and fine adjustments claims not to impose values, but merely to apply knowledge. His recommendations appear neutral, rational, and inevitable. Normative debate is displaced. Conflicts of principle are replaced by the language of optimization.
This displacement produces a distinct form of authority. It is neither the authority of the legislator nor that of the ruler, but that of the technical interpreter of reality. The expert does not govern; he advises. He does not impose; he recommends. He does not decide; he adjusts. Yet his guidance increasingly shapes behavior, policy, and social expectations.
This pattern is not new, but it assumes renewed forms. It reappears whenever complex systems are treated as susceptible to continuous correction by expertise. Intervention does not announce itself as total. It installs itself gradually, step by step, each stage defensible when considered in isolation. Taken together, these steps amount to the administration of what cannot be managed as a rational project.
The contemporary fascination with longevity illustrates this tendency clearly. Preventive care, metabolic attention, and lifestyle changes are not problematic in themselves. They belong to good medicine. The shift occurs when prudent care gives way to permanent optimization. The body comes to be treated as an administrable system, whose trajectory can be continuously corrected through data, monitoring, and intervention.
In this context, aging ceases to be a human condition requiring adaptation and becomes a technical challenge. The physician moves away from the role of caretaker and approaches that of an engineer. Health turns into a continuous project of improvement. What can be measured takes precedence. What escapes metrics loses relevance.
The same style appears in other domains. Technically sophisticated opinion-makers, equipped with refined scientific language, avoid clear normative commitments. They present themselves as moderate, averse to extremes, guided solely by evidence. The refusal to choose principles is portrayed as intellectual superiority. Technique replaces judgment.
It is at this point that the Austrian critique becomes indispensable. Ludwig von Mises showed that the “middle of the road” does not constitute a stable position, as developed in “Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism.” Interventions introduced as partial corrections alter the very system they seek to adjust, generating new distortions that then justify further intervention. What begins as moderation ends as the continuous expansion of control.
Friedrich Hayek deepened this diagnosis by identifying scientism as an epistemological error, especially in The Counter-Revolution of Science. The problem is not science itself, but the improper transfer of its methods to complex orders governed by dispersed, tacit, and contextual knowledge. When measurable data is treated as total knowledge, humility gives way to cognitive arrogance. What cannot be quantified is dismissed as irrelevant.
Within this framework, moderation plays a decisive role. By avoiding normative conflict, it allows decisions to be presented as technical necessities. Authority becomes insulated from contestation, hidden behind the language of scientific inevitability. The expert comes to operate as a mediator between knowledge and power.
Such mediation rarely remains neutral. Technical adjustments, standardization, and “evidence-based” recommendations require institutional backing. Proximity to political power becomes functional. A relationship of convenience emerges: expertise in exchange for reach, legitimacy in exchange for deference. What appears as rational cooperation takes on the clear contours of cronyism.
Moderation—once converted into method—reveals its true function. It does not limit power; it smooths it. It does not prevent the expansion of control; it renders it acceptable, elegant, and gradual. Under the appearance of prudence, authority is preserved while responsibility is diluted.
The most effective forms of control rarely present themselves as radical. They arrive politely, wrapped in data, moderation, and technical language. They do not demand obedience; they request trust. They advance not through confrontation, but through accommodation.
When moderation becomes method, it ceases to protect spontaneous order and serves it merely as rhetorical ornament. The middle of the road reveals itself not as balance, but as a gentle slope toward the rationalized management of social life.
